Managing Low Back Pain

Physical Therapy

Physical therapy is one of the best ways to maintain function and manage long term with chronic back pain

Trigger Point Injections

These injection can provide relief for some of the muscle pain that you have.

Caudal Epidural Steroid Injection

This injection is placed low in the spine near the tailbone. We use this injection when your pain is low in your back and you have had surgery or some other change in your spine that will not allow full access to the higher levels.

Lumbar Epidural Steroid Injection

We target the exact level where the nerves are sending pain signals based on your symptoms and your MRI or CT Scan. This injection can provide 3-6 months of relief.

Transforaminal Epidural Injection

We use this injection when it is clear that there are one or two nerves coming from the spine that are causing your pain. We use fluoroscopy to place the medication right by the nerve that is causing the pain. This can provide 3-6 months of pain relief.

Facet Joint Injections

We use these injections for pain coming from arthritis of the joints in your spine. This usually causes pain that is just in your back without shooting down your legs. These injections can give you between 3 and 6 months of relief.

Medial Branch Block

With this injection we put numbing medicine along the nerves that we think are sending the pain signals to your brain. We then ask you to measure your pain every hour, if your pain goes down by 80% after the injection then you may be a candidate for an ablation (See below). We do two of these tests before we can do an ablation using two different types of numbing medicine to make sure that we are targeting the right nerves. This is a test injection and only provides relief for 30 minutes to a few hours.

Radiofrequency Ablation

If the medial branch blocks reduced your pain by 80% we then can perform a radiofrequency ablation. This is done by putting needles in the same places that we did for the tests but instead of just putting numbing medicine there, we apply energy to the nerve (radiofrequency energy) this makes it so the nerve will stop sending the pain signals. This can reduce your pain for 6 months to a year.