Elite Pain & Spine

Steroids are powerful anti-inflammatory medications that deliver fast relief from swelling and related pain. Your epidural space is the area in your spine between your vertebral wall and the dural sac that surrounds your nerves as they travel through your spine. Your epidural space is filled with blood vessels and fatty tissue that cushion and protect your spinal cord. An epidural steroid injection delivers a potent anti-inflammatory to your epidural space to reduce swelling that compresses your spinal cord and causes pain and other disruptive symptoms.

A nerve block is an injection therapy that delivers medications to one or a group of nerves to ease or eliminate pain. The medications used in the treatment include a local anesthetic to disrupt the pain signals that travel to your brain. You can also receive anti-inflammatory medicines to reduce inflammation that could be contributing to your pain.

Nerve ablation — also called radiofrequency ablation — is a minimally invasive treatment that uses heat to destroy the nerve fibers responsible for sending pain signals to your brain. The physicians at Elite Pain & Spine use nerve ablation to ease or eliminate back and neck pain as well as arthritic joint pain. Radiofrequency ablation provides a range of benefits, including a reduced need for surgery, a rapid recovery, and decreased dependence on pain medication.

Kyphoplasty is a surgical procedure to treat vertebral compression fractures. It can reduce pain and increase mobility. It offers a minimally invasive alternative to other surgeries. A doctor may suggest kyphoplasty to a person with a vertebral compression fracture. Kyphoplasty is a vertebral augmentation surgery to treat fractures in the vertebra. These fractures may occur because of conditions such as osteoporosis or trauma. Vertebroplasty is a similar technique. Both procedures involve injecting acrylic bone cement into the fracture through a hole in the skin. The difference between the two techniques is that kyphoplasty also attempts to address curvature of the spine to restore height. This involves inflating a small balloon in the vertebra to create space before injecting the bone cement. Some doctors refer to this procedure as balloon kyphoplasty.

Spinal cord stimulation therapy masks pain signals before they reach the brain. A small device, similar to a pacemaker, delivers electrical pulses to the spinal cord. It helps people better manage their chronic pain and reduce their use of opioid medications. It may be an option if you suffer chronic back, leg or arm pain and have not found relief with other therapies.