What is Interventional Pain Management?

Interventional pain management is a sub-specialty of Pain Medicine with the purpose of treating pain by utilizing specific procedures. Like other aspects of Pain Medicine the goal is to help reduce and sometimes eliminate pain from variety of causes and improve quality of life. What makes it different is the use of an intervention to specifically target the source of pain by a specific procedure. These procedures are typically minimally invasive such as an injection, nerve block, stimulation, or ablation.

Interventional pain management can be helpful for acute, subacute and even chronic pain. Typically its recommended for pain that has not resolved on its own, did not improve with conservative and less invasive treatments (such as physical therapy, chiropractor, massage, medications, etc), or in cases where the pain is too severe to be able to tolerate and participate in conservative care. Interventional pain management may also be utilized as an alternative to surgery, to delay surgery, or in situations where surgery is contraindicated. Finally it can also be an option for those who have had unsuccessful surgery and continue to have pain.

Common Conditions Treated

• Neck pain
• Back Pain
• Joint pain (Hip, knee, shoulder, sacroiliac, etc)
• Chronic headaches/migraines
• Nerve pain

Interventional Pain Management Treatments

This will of course depend on the diagnosis of pain and may include the following types of procedures.

Epidural injections – injection of steroid and/or anesthetic medications into the epidural space to help treatment/diagnose spine related pain due to disc disease, disc herniation, or spinal stenosis.

Facet joint injections – injection of steroid and/or anesthetic medications into spinal facet joints to help treatment/diagnose spine related pain due to facet joints (joints that connect spinal vertebrae).

Other type of steroid injections – such as knee joint injections, hip joint injections, sacroiliac joint injections, shoulder joint injections, etc.

Nerve blocks, such as medial branch blocks, lateral branch blocks, genicular blocks, etc. Here specific nerves are “blocked” by injecting an anesthetic with primary goal to help diagnose the source of pain.

Radiofrequency nerve ablation – here specific nerves or nerve branches are ablation or destroyed using radiofrequency waves to help stop pain.

Spinal cord stimulation – here electrical impulses are used to stop the transmission of pain signals to the brain.

Often the interventions detailed above are used together with other type of treatments such as physical therapy, occupational therapy, acupuncture, manipulation, medications and lifestyle modification, in order to maximize overall benefit and improvement of the underlying pain condition.