The usefulness of interventional pain management cannot be overemphasized when it comes to dealing with chronic or acute back pain, as the process that is engaged when it comes to interventional pain management is a thorough consideration of medical history and also a physical examination. However, different types of treatments can be used in dealing with chronic back pains with interventional pain management.
- Epidural injections: This happens in all areas of the spine, it involves the use of anesthetic and steroid medications injected into the epidural space to reduce the pain or diagnose a particular condition in the body.
- Nerve, root, and medial branch blocks: This type makes use of injections to determine if a specific spinal nerve root is the place where the pain is coming from. Blocks also can be used to minimize inflammation and pain.
- Facet joint injections: This is another type of treatment that is used in interventional pain management. These injections can also provide pain relief to the body system.
- Discography: This type of treatment talks about an inside look into the discs to diagnose if they are the main cause of a patient’s pain. This procedure involves the usage of a dye that is injected into a disc and then examined the result by using an x-ray or CT Scan.
- Pulsed Radiofrequency Neurotomy (PRFN): This type of interventional pain management is a minimally invasive step that helps to disable the spinal nerves and prevents them from transmitting pain signals to the brain and this will help reduce the feeling of the pain as the brain stops picking signals.
- Rhizotomy: This particular treatment procedure makes use of a heated electrode to turn off the pain signals, these heated electrodes are applied to certain nerves that function as pain signal carriers to the brain.
- Spinal cord stimulation: this type of interventional pain management makes use of electrical impulses to block the pain from being perceived in the brain in the bit to relieve and reduce the intensity of the pain felt by the patient.
- Intrathecal pumps: this is a surgically implanted pump that helps to deliver pain medications to the precise location in the spine where the pain is located to reduce the pain in that region.
- Percutaneous Discectomy/Nucleoplasty: this procedure involves the removal of a particular tissue from the disc to decompress and relieve pressure.
On a general note, interventional pain management treatment most of the time includes other treatments such as physical therapy, occupational therapy, as well as lifestyle adjustment which involves diet, exercise, cutting down on smoking and alcohol consumption to progressively enhance these procedures,
