THE PAIN CENTER BLOG

A combination of an Intellis™ screening and spinal cord stimulator trial can enable you to gain more control over treatments and gauge the overall effectiveness of the neurostimulator in relieving pain in your daily life.

Living with chronic back pain can take a real toll on a person, from both a mental and a physical standpoint. Chronic pain can restrict a person's capability to engage in their everyday activities, and it can also interfere with their ability to maintain healthy relationships with family and friends.

The use of Spinal Cord Stimulators as a treatment option have been in practice for decades. Spinal Cord Stimulators (also called SCS) use electrical impulses to relieve chronic pain. It is believed that electrical pulses prevent pain signals from being received by the brain.

When you are in pain & in need of pain relief, your doctor may ask you where the pain is & the intensity of that pain. This is important because nerve pain & muscle pain different in treatment. To learn more about the differences between nerve pain & muscle pain read more of this Pain Center blog.

Until recently, almost all medical studies were performed exclusively on men. Researchers were worried that the female menstrual cycle would introduce extra, uncontrolled factors into the studies. If they were looking into the effects of an antidepressant, for example, mood swings caused by hormone changes would have made it more difficult to assess which symptoms were caused by the medication and which were not.

If an individual is suffering from chronic pain in the neck, shoulders, or arms, this could be symptomatic of nerve damage in the cervical spine. To help treat this pain, a procedure known as a cervical selective nerve root block (SNRB) can help relieve this pain in the form of an injection. 

Peripheral Neuropathy is a result of the damage of the Peripheral Nervous System. A recurring feeling of tingling, prickling or numbness in the feet & hands is one of the most common symptoms of Peripheral Neuropathy. Learn more about Peripheral Neuropathy by reading this Pain Center Blog!

Steroids reduce the body's inflammatory response, leading to welcome pain relief. A pain specialist will inject these medications into large or small joints of the body such as a wrist, elbow, or ankle, although the back is another common site. To learn more about steroid injection, read more.

Back pain is frustrating, annoying, & in some cases, unbearable. It can result from any number of things, but most back problems originate from the spine. If one of the discs in your spine slips out of place & results in a herniated disc, it could cause some major irritation for surrounding nerves.

For patients considering visiting a pain specialist for the first time, there are many questions that need to be answered. Confusion about what a pain specialist is and what the process of treatment involves is very common - fortunately, curing pain is nowhere near as daunting as it may seem.