When your back is always aching, it’s hard to get excited even about the things that matter most to you. Your low back pain acts as a constant drain, depriving you of the best parts of life. Isn’t it time for you to start to feel better more of the time?
At Performance Pain & Sports Medicine, our team of pain management, regenerative medicine, and anti-aging specialists understand the complex factors that go into back pain problems, including the role your spine might play in your overall issue.
Under the leadership of Dr. Matthias Wiederholz and Dr. Suzanne Manzi, we provide treatment to new and existing patients from our locations in League City and Houston, Texas, and Lawrenceville, New Jersey.
One of the options we encourage our patients to look into is an injection procedure called a medial branch block. For some, this treatment results in lasting low back pain relief. A medial branch block may also be what your provider at PPSM needs to learn more about the causes of your condition.
Could a medial branch block be all or part of the pain management solution you’ve been looking for? Here’s what we want you to know about this injection treatment.
A medial branch block uses an injection of anesthetic medication to provide targeted spinal pain relief. Your provider at PPSM guides your injection with an X-ray or fluoroscope, delivering the pain-relieving medication to exactly where it’s needed most.
Pain responses travel in the form of electrical information through your nerves to your brain, where they register as sensation. A medial branch block targets the area where pain signals are produced in your spine, preventing those signals from reaching your brain and providing immediate pain relief results.
This procedure is minimally invasive, and, unlike other forms of medication management, doesn’t come with a risk of addiction. Medial branch blocks, like other spinal injections, are an important tool for back pain treatment.
Many individuals find lasting pain relief with a minimally invasive medial branch block. Sometimes, disrupting the cycle of pain is all you need to improve your condition. You start to feel better right after your procedure and continue to experience reduced pain levels.
However, our team at Performance Pain & Sports Medicine also sometimes uses medial branch blocks as part of the diagnostic process. If that’s the case for you, your medial branch block might be just the beginning of your pain management treatment plan.
We use medial branch blocks to diagnose pain in your neck, mid-spine, and low back. Based on your response to the injection over a few hours, recorded by you in a pain diary, we discuss next steps in your interventional pain treatment. We exhaust conservative treatment options before moving on to surgical treatment.
A medial branch block is a same-day procedure. You won’t need to plan on a lot of recovery time following your appointment.
If low back pain symptoms are significantly intruding on your quality of life, maybe it’s time to talk to our team and learn more about your treatment options, including a medial branch block. Schedule your initial consultation by contacting us online, or call our location most convenient to you today.
