Best tips for managing pain. When it comes to managing pain, doctors have for years simply written prescriptions and moved on to the next patient appointment.
Best Tips For Managing Pain
In more recent years, after considerable research and study, other methods of managing the pain of patients have been utilized. Lumbar discography is an effort to evaluate the cause of back pain caused by lumbar fusion that has not responded effectively to other non-surgical procedures. This is most often conducted by doctors to find the reason for chronic hip, back, groin, and leg pain.
For those who have experienced low back pain and sciatica, which is pain that radiates from the back down the leg, it can be very excruciating.
Since the 1950s doctors have used epidural steroid injections to provide temporary relief that can last from one week to a year. These injections are located into the neck (cervical) or back (lumbar) regions of the body. Radicular pain is another term for sciatica and injections into the leg provide much needed pain relief there. During this time a doctor will also prescribe various rehabilitative therapies like stretching exercises to help with long-term pain relief.
Many patients are afraid of being injected with needles and the word steroid has gotten a negative connotation when it comes to athletes using them to unfairly enhance their abilities.
Although epidural injections conjure up reducing pain in laboring women about to give birth, combining epidural medications with steroids has become one of the leading methods doctors uses to alleviate pain in patients.
Best Tips For Managing Pain
The term vertoplasty sounds a bit alarming, but it actually is a procedure that can be done on an outpatient basis. Doctors use this to stop pain that is caused by a spinal fracture. A small puncture into the skin along with local anesthesia allows this to be conducted in an hour’s time as opposed to a large incision and general anesthesia that would require an inpatient stay. Acrylic bone cement is inserted into the spaces within the bone of the fractured vertebra. As the cement quickly hardens the bone is stabilized. Afterward the small puncture is covered up with a bandage and the patient is free to leave and rest at home for the following 24 hours.
Research has shown many patients receive pain relief up to three years later.
For many people, suffering with neck and back pain can be very debilitating. If back surgery has not proven to solve the pain, some doctors have turned to spinal cord stimulation as a solution to pain. Despite this procedure being around since 1967, it was not until 1989 that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cleared the use of this procedure for pain relief of the arms, legs, and trunk areas of the body. A small device is implanted near the spine to direct electrical impulses into the pain points to block or modify pain messages to the brain.
This device is similar to a pacemaker that is inserted near the heart.
No matter which areas of the body are in need of pain management, there are minimally invasive techniques that doctors are prepared to use. Patients who would like to avoid in patient hospital stays and longer rehabilitation at home, will find his skill and knowledge of the latest in innovative pain management a welcome sigh of relief to end or manage pain.
Read more – Easy Pain Management Techniques
