Pain problems are very difficult, not just for the patient, but for their family as well. At Vanguard Interventional Pain Specialists, we combine medical expertise of the latest pain management techniques with an endless dedication to providing compassionate, personal care.
SERVICES AVAILABLE
Interlaminar Epidural Injections
An epidural injection delivers steroids into the epidural space around spinal nerve roots to relieve pain – back pain, leg pain, or other pain – caused by irritated spinal nerves.
WATCH Interlaminar Epidural Procedure
Transforaminal Epidural Injections/Selective Nerve Root Blocks
Provides an alternative intervention to interlaminar epidural injections to target radicular pain.
Epidural Steroid Injection Transforaminal Approach
Facet Injections
Facet joint injections has both diagnostic and therapeutic purpose. It Targets the medial branch nerve. This procedure can provide pain relief for up to 6-12 months.
Trigger Point Injection
A trigger point injection can help soothe muscle pain, especially in your arms, legs, lower back and neck. It also can be used to treat fibromyalgia, tension headaches and myofascial pain.
Sacroiliac Joint Injections
A procedure that uses radio waves to heat and destroy nerves. These nerves carry pain signals from the injured sacroiliac joint to the brain.
Radiofrequency Ablation (RFA)
If facet injections shows greater than 75% pain reduction, then a lumbar radiofrequency rhizotomy is followed by using radiofrequency waves to disrupt the nerve supply to the affected facet joint, resulting in prolonged pain relief. Repeat procedures may be required in the future to maintain pain control at about every six month interval.
Radiofrequency Ablation Procedure Animation
Hydrocision
SpineJet uses a high-speed water stream to remove herniated disc tissue, thereby relieving the nerve pressure that causes back and leg pain. It generates power equivalent to laser and radio frequency technologies without causing heat damage to surrounding tissues and structures. SpineJet is inserted into the disc by dilating the annular fibers or outer wall of the disc. As a result this approach offers significant advantages over traditional surgery and is far less traumatic.
LASE Endoscopic Discectomy
Endoscopic spine surgery is a revolutionary minimally invasive procedure that effectively treats disc herniations, spinal stenosis, bone spurs, slipped vertebrates, and spinal joint arthritis. Using only local anesthesia, no fusion, micro-instruments and laser technology, this procedure is clearly very different from standard open surgery.
Laser endoscopic spine surgery is utilized to treat disc herniation or bulging disc that’s causing sciatica – back pain that’s radiating to the buttock and legs.
Discogram
An invasive diagnostic test that uses x-rays to examine the intervertebral discs of your spine. A special dye is injected into the injured disc or series of discs. The dye makes the disc visible on a fluoroscope monitor and x-ray film.
Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP)
Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy uses injections of a concentration of a patient’s own platelets to accelerate the healing of injured tendons, ligaments, muscles and joints. In this way, PRP injections use each individual patient’s own healing system to improve musculoskeletal problems.
PRP Procedure explained in through this animated simulation
Stem Cells
Stem cells are thought to mediate repair via five primary mechanisms:
1) providing an anti-inflammatory effect,
2) homing to damaged tissues and recruiting other cells, such as endothelial progenitor cells, that are necessary for tissue growth,
3) supporting tissue remodeling over scar formation,
4) inhibiting apoptosis, and
5) differentiating into bone, cartilage, tendon, and ligament tissue, to further enrich
blood supply to the damaged areas, and consequently promote tissue regeneration, platelet-rich plasma could be used in conjunction with stem cell transplantation.
Disc Biacuplasty
Disc biacuplasty is a minimally invasive procedure that relieves low-back
pain caused by damaged spinal discs.
If a diagnostic test called discography shows that a damaged spinal disc is causing your low-back pain, you might have disc biacuplasty. This procedure reduces pain by interrupting pain signals from the nerves.
Through a special type of X-ray called fluoroscopy to guide two small needles into the damaged disc. Radio waves send an electrical current to the needles, heating them. The heat damages the abnormal nerves in the disc, stopping the pain messages. Heat from the needles may also strengthen the disc tissue.
This is an outpatient procedure that takes about 30 minutes. You will be given sedation and local anesthetic. Recovery takes about 12 weeks, with some limits on activity early on.
MILD Procedure
A safe procedure that can help patients diagnosed with lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) stand longer and walk farther with less pain. It is a short, outpatient procedure, performed through a very small incision (about the size of a baby aspirin) that requires no general anesthesia, no implants, and no stitches.
MILD Procedure Patient Education Video
Superion Implant
Superion is a completely new, minimally invasive approach to treating lumbar
stenosis that fills a gap in the continuum between conservative care and invasive surgery. Designed with patient safety and comfort in mind, Superion is implanted through a small tube the size of a dime to reduce tissue damage and blood loss. It’s a simple outpatient procedure with a rapid recovery time and no destabilization of the spine. The Superion implant acts as an indirect decompression device. Its anatomic design provides optimal fit and preserves a patient’s anatomy and ability to maintain motion. Superion acts as an extension blocker, relieving pressure on the affected nerves in the manner that one would achieve relief in a seated or flexed position.
Spinal Cord Stimulation
A pain-relief technique that delivers a low-voltage electrical current continuously to the spinal cord to block the sensation of pain. SCS is the most commonly used implantable neurostimulation technology for management of pain syndromes.
Spinal Cord Stimulation for Chronic Pain
Intrathecal Drug Delivery
Also known as the “pain pump,” uses a small pump to deliver pain medication directly to your spinal cord. The pump is surgically placed under the abdominal skin and delivers pain medication through a catheter to the area around your spinal cord.
Intrathecal Pump for Pancreatic Cancer Pain Management
Intercostal/Paravertebral Blocks
The technique of injecting local anesthetic adjacent to the thoracic vertebra close to where the spinal nerves emerge from the intervertebral foramina. This results in ipsilateral somatic and sympathetic nerve blockade in multiple contiguous thoracic dermatomes above and below the site of injection.
Occipital Nerve Blocks
Injections of a steroid or other medication around the greater and lesser occipital nerves that are located on the back of the head just above the neck area.
Peripheral Nerve Blocks
A type of regional anesthesia. The anesthetic is injected near a specific nerve or bundle of nerves to block sensations of pain from a specific area of the body. Nerve blocks usually last longer than local anesthesia.
Sympathetic Blocks
An injection in the middle of the lower back, toward the left or right side. The “lumbar sympathetic nerves” are a small bundle of nerves that carries “sympathetic” nerve signals from the lower extremities.
Kyphoplasty/Vertebroplasty
Similar spinal procedures in which bone cement is injected through a small hole in the skin into a fractured vertebra to try to relieve back pain caused by a vertebral compression fractures.
Vertebroplasty & Kyphoplasty (Spine Surgery)
Therapeutic Botox Injections
Used to treat dystonia – neuromuscular disorder that produces involuntary muscle contractions, or spasm, along with chronic migraine headaches not relieved by pharmacological agents.