Chronic and enduring discomfort is nothing like the pain of an acute injury.
In those cases, you may feel bad – really bad – for days or weeks, but the pain gradually lessens, letting you know that you’re on the mend.
Chronic Pain: An Unwanted Permanent Guest: The Never-Ending Symphony of Aches and Pains.
Chronic pain, on the other hand, is unpredictable and relentless. It comes and goes and sometimes stays.
That unwanted, Permanent guest, never calling, and appearing on random days. However, there's never a glimmer of improvement on the horizon. With pain of this nature, you may feel ok one day, then can barely move the next. Get ready for a wild rollercoaster ride where your life and plans are in a perpetual wobble, as if pain is playing a sneaky game of hide-and-seek with your schedule.
Living with chronic pain is tough but finding relief for it is even more so. Embarking on a
torturous journey of pinpointing the exact affliction tormenting you and uncovering a remedy that brings relief usually entails enduring countless rounds of agonizing trial and excruciating error.
That’s where NYPMD New York interventional pain management comes in, utilizing mostly minimally invasive techniques to lessen a patient’s pain.
The Solution: Pain Management Injections
Pain management injections are like striking gold – safe, effective, and with the promise of yielding longer-lasting solutions compared to mere oral medication. – and are a less invasive option than surgery.
These injections are the treasure trove for treating an array of orthopedic or neurological woes, whether they stem from car accidents, work-related mishaps, sports injuries, or other sources of discomfort.
Epidural steroid injection. This injection is common for lower back pain but may also help with upper back and neck pain.
When injected, steroidal medication is injected into the epidural space around the spinal cord. The medication reduces inflammation and pain.
Nerve blocks are another common pain management injection.
These injections deliver an anesthetic close to particular nerves, in an effort to interrupt nerve signals before they can get to the brain, where they would register as pain.
These injections are used to treat pain caused by inflamed nerves and can be used to help identify the source of your pain.
Joint injections deliver medication into the joints for quick relief of pain and inflammation.
In medicine, a joint injection (intra-articular injection) is a procedure used in the treatment of inflammatory joint conditions, such as:
Rheumatoid arthritis
Psoriatic arthritis
Gout, tendinitis
Bursitis
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
Osteoarthritis.
Whether you have pain in one joint from an injury (or just wear and tear), or you’ve developed osteoarthritis in multiple joints, injections could help.
Injections may be appropriate for joints throughout your body, including your knee, hip, shoulder, ankle, sacroiliac (SI) joint, and facet (spine) joints.
Trigger point injections can help relax knots of muscles that may be causing pain in other parts of the body (for example, a trigger point in the neck is a common cause of tension headaches).
What are trigger point injections used for?
NYPMD New York Pain Specialists use trigger point injections to help treat myofascial pain. “Myo” means muscle and “fascial” means fascia. Your fascia is the thin, white connective tissue that’s wrapped around every muscle.
The pain and tenderness in myofascial pain are typically due to one or more trigger points.
To the touch, trigger points feel like small bumps, nodules or knots in your muscle.
Trigger points can develop in any muscle, but the most common muscle groups that are treated with trigger point injections include:
Masseter: This muscle helps you chew your food. It's in your jaw and helps your mouth move when you eat.
Levator Scapulae: These are muscles on the sides of your neck. They help lift your shoulders, like when you're shrugging.
Gluteus Medius: Found in your hip area, these muscles help you move your leg away from your body, like when you're stepping to the side.
Quadratus Lumborum: Deep in your lower back, this muscle supports your spine and helps you stand up straight.
Trapezius: This muscle covers the back of your neck and shoulders. It helps move and stabilize your shoulders and neck.
Sternocleidomastoid: This muscle is in the front of your neck. It helps you turn and tilt your head.
Temporalis: Located on the sides of your head near your temples, this muscle helps you close your jaw and chew.
These muscles play various roles in your body, from helping you move to supporting your posture and allowing you to do everyday activities.
Trigger points can cause certain types of pain or issues.
For example, trigger points affecting your trapezius muscle may cause tension headaches. A trigger point affecting your piriformis muscle (a muscle in your buttocks) can cause piriformis syndrome — when the piriformis muscle presses on your sciatic nerve. It causes pain or numbness in your buttock and down the back of your leg.
Orthobiologics, also known as regenerative medicine, is a rapidly advancing field that offers new options to treat acute orthopaedic injuries and chronic or degenerative conditions without surgery. It is one of multiple promising treatments for muscle, joint, and soft tissue injuries.
NYPMD New York Accident and Injury Care providers are on the leading edge of regenerative medicine treatments. NYPMD works with a multidisciplinary team of New York orthopaedic surgeons, sports medicine doctors, pain and injury providers, and NY physical therapists to help patients find the most effective and least invasive options for a wide range of injuries and conditions.
Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) Injections are gaining popularity for a variety of conditions, from sports injuries to hair loss.
The treatment uses a patient’s own blood cells to accelerate healing in a specific area.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNO
PRP treatment helps support wound healing after a personal injury, (car accident, work injury), and joint injury.
Because the treatments use a patient’s own tissues, PRP injections are safe and can be administered alone or used in conjunction with other procedures.
PRP injections are used for a range of conditions,* from musculoskeletal pain and injuries:
Tendon, Ligament, Muscle and Joint Injuries
PRP injections may be able to treat a range of musculoskeletal injuries and conditions.
For example, chronic tendon injuries such as tennis elbow or jumper’s knee can often take a long time to heal, so adding PRP shots to a treatment regimen can help to stimulate the healing process, decrease pain and enable a return to activities sooner.
Post-surgical Healing
Clinicians first used PRP to accelerate healing after jaw or plastic surgeries. Now, post-surgical PRP injections have expanded to help heal muscles, tendons and ligaments, as procedures on these tissues have notoriously long recovery times.
Osteoarthritis
Early studies indicate that PRP injections may help treat osteoarthritis pain and stiffness by modulating the joint environment and reducing inflammation, but research is growing.
NYPMD New York Pain Specialists are here to relieve chronic pain and help our patients return to being their former active selves.
Instead of relying on medication, we intervene in a much more effective manner using a vast array of therapies such as pain management injections, to help relieve pain.
We aim to improve one’s quality of life and help to regain function and mobility.
Learn more about how pain management injections may help you,
Call the NYPMD Pain Specialists of New York at 1 (800) 929-0849 to request an appointment, or request an appointment online.