Taking a Look at Interventional Treatments

Chronic back pain can impact daily life, making even simple tasks challenging. While traditional treatments like physical therapy, medications, and exercise often help, some cases require interventional treatments. Here’s a closer look at these advanced options for managing persistent back pain.

Common Causes of Chronic Back Pain

There a multitude of causes of chronic back pain, but many of the most common causes are:

  • Muscle or ligament strain which can be caused by repeated strenuous movement or a sudden awkward movement
  • Bulging or ruptured discs happen when the soft material inside a disc in the spine bulge or rupture and press on a nerve
  • Osteoarthritis can affect the lower back
  • Osteoporosis happens when the spine’s vertebra develop painful breaks if the bones are porous and brittle 
  • Ankylosing spondylitis is an inflammatory disease that can cause some bones in the spin to fuse

Understanding the root cause is essential for choosing the right treatment

There are several interventional treatment options that a spine and musculoskeletal doctor can recommend for your customized treatment plan. Those include: 

  1. Epidural Steroid Injections (ESIs) ESIs deliver anti-inflammatory medication directly around the spinal nerves to reduce swelling and pain. These are effective for conditions like herniated discs or spinal stenosis.
  2. Facet Joint Injections: These injections target the small joints along the spine to alleviate arthritis-related pain.
  3. Radiofrequency Ablation (RFA) RFA uses heat to disrupt pain signals from specific nerves, offering longer-lasting relief for some patients.
  4. Nerve Blocks: These injections temporarily block pain signals, often used for diagnostic or therapeutic purposes.
  5. Spinal Cord Stimulation (SCS): SCS involves implanting a device that sends mild electrical pulses to the spinal cord, masking pain signals before they reach the brain.
  6. Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery: For conditions like disc herniation or stenosis, procedures such as microdiscectomy or spinal decompression can provide significant relief with shorter recovery times.

Complementary Approaches

Your doctor can put together a customized treatment plan, but patients see the greatest amount of success when they pair this plan with other changes. Based on your health and condition this might include:

  • Physical therapy
  • Weight management
  • Mind-body techniques like yoga or meditation

Putting in the work to improve your health will help you to have a richer and fuller life. Dr. Harris of Morristown, TN’s Harris Clinic has been among the first in the region to offer many new procedures and services over the last three decades and continues to add the most current strategies and procedures available. In February of 2020, Dr. Harris received his CIPS certification (Certified Interventional Pain Sonologist). This is a very exclusive certification and has only been granted to 20 physicians in the U.S. at this time. This signifies advanced certification in ultrasound evaluations and ultrasound guided procedures for pain related problems. He and the staff at Harris Clinic are dedicated to providing compassionate, advanced and appropriate care for patients.

The Healthstar Physicians network offers primary care and specialty services across East Tennessee. Our medical team is part of your community and because of that we are Near You, For You.