Pain Management

Long-term back or neck pain will affect every aspect of your life, limiting your ability to work, play, or enjoy time with your family. If you’re struggling with a spinal condition, Stepan Kasimian, MD, and his colleagues at HAAS Spine & Orthopaedics can help with their expertise in pain management. The practice has convenient offices in Glendale, Santa Ana, and Upland, California, delivering advanced treatments like epidural steroid injections. Call HAAS Spine & Orthopaedics today or book an appointment online to see how you can benefit from pain management.

What is pain management?

Pain management addresses the causes and symptoms of chronic (long-term) conditions where pain is a leading symptom and hard to control. HAAS Spine & Orthopaedics specializes in treating pain caused by spinal conditions.

Neck and back pain often develops gradually and lasts for months or even years. Sometimes pain caused by a sudden injury fails to heal well and becomes a chronic condition. Pain-relief medication can help with these problems but doesn’t cure them, making pain management the more effective treatment.

What conditions benefit from pain management?

Common conditions that pain management can help with include:

• Spinal stenosis (narrowed spinal canal)
• Herniated discs
• Spondylolisthesis (slipping vertebrae)
• Spondylosis (degenerative spinal arthritis)
• Facet joint arthritis (affecting the connections between spinal bones)
• Degenerative disc disease
• Bone spurs
• Cervical and lumbar radiculopathy

Radiculopathy is spinal nerve compression or pinching. The cervical spine is your neck, and the lumbar spine is your lower back. Cervical radiculopathy commonly causes neck pain, while lumbar radiculopathy or sciatica is a leading cause of lower back pain.

Radiculopathy is often a critical factor in back and neck pain development. The spinal cord nerves connect to your brain, relaying messages to and from the peripheral nerves that spread throughout your body.

These nerves are rooted in your spinal cord and must pass through the spinal canal, where damaged discs, bone spurs, and thickened ligaments can trap or pinch them. In addition to pain, radiculopathy can cause numbness, weakness, and unpleasant tingling, prickling, or burning sensations that spread down your arms or legs.

What does pain management involve?

The HAAS Spine & Orthopaedics doctors use pain management to reduce or relieve pain without surgery. Some of the main treatments they use are:

Steroid injections

Steroids are powerful anti-inflammatory, pain-relieving medications. Injecting steroids into the epidural space within the spinal canal, the facet joints that connect your vertebrae, and other parts of your spine delivers these potent drugs directly to the injured tissues.

Nerve blocks

Nerve blocks contain a local anesthetic that completely numbs the pain. Doctors use them to locate the source of back and neck pain and offer relief.

Steroid injections often contain a local anesthetic, and nerve blocks might also contain steroids to offer even better pain reduction.

HAAS Spine & Orthopaedics uses these and other pain management techniques when physical therapy and other noninvasive treatments aren’t working. If pain management doesn’t help, you could be a candidate for spine surgery.

Call HAAS Spine & Orthopaedics today or book an appointment online to learn more about advanced pain management and how it can help relieve your back and neck pain.