Millions of Americans suffer from chronic pain and the debilitating symptoms and side effects it causes. Chronic pain takes a toll on your physical health, of course, but it also has emotional impact and can significantly affect your quality of life.
While advances in pain management have definitely helped many people find relief for their symptoms, the first step in managing pain is determining where it’s coming from. That’s where nerve blocks can help.
Most people think of nerve blocks as a pain treatment — and they absolutely play a role in relieving symptoms. But they also serve an important use in pinpointing the cause of pain.
In this post, Zaid Malik, MD, and the team at Superior Pain Relief explain how.
A nerve block is a simple, minimally invasive medical procedure that injects special solutions directly to a nerve suspected of causing painful symptoms. The solution typically contains a local anesthetic to block pain, along with a corticosteroid to reduce inflammation and swelling.
Injections are guided using real-time imaging for highly precise placement. Once injected, the solution blocks the nerve pathway, preventing pain signals from traveling to your brain — essentially turning off the mechanism responsible for pain sensations.
Nerve blocks are performed on an outpatient basis, and we use a local anesthetic to numb the surrounding skin so you stay comfortable and relaxed. Afterward, you might have some residual soreness in the injection site, but you should notice an improvement in symptoms soon afterward.
Nerve blocks treat pain caused by several conditions, including:
As noted, pain management is just one beneficial use of nerve blocks. We also routinely use nerve blocks to diagnose pain and its underlying cause.
Because nerve blocks target individual nerves and groups of nerves, they can be very helpful in identifying which nerves are causing pain. By selectively targeting a particular nerve or set of nerves, Dr. Malik can observe how your pain responds.
For example, a medial branch nerve block can help determine if a facet joint — located between the vertebrae in the back of the spine — is causing your back pain. If you experience symptom relief, it's a strong indicator that the targeted medial branch nerves within the facet joint are causing your pain.
On the other hand, if the nerve block provides no relief, it signals that there’s another cause for your pain — one that might not be nerve-related at all.
As a diagnostic tool, a nerve block helps Dr. Malik and his team manage complex pain conditions where multiple structures are involved — for instance, pain involving multiple nerve roots or widespread neuropathy.
Information gathered from nerve block studies support treatment and intervention. If a diagnostic nerve block is effective, Dr. Malik can tailor your treatment appropriately with additional nerve blocks, or he may recommend alternatives — such as radiofrequency ablation, spinal cord stimulation, or other interventions — depending on your needs.
Nerve blocks provide our team with in-depth information about your pain so we can tailor a treatment plan that provides long-term meaningful relief. To learn how we can develop a plan just for you, request an appointment online or over the phone with Dr. Malik and the team at Superior Pain Relief in Baytown, Willis, and The Woodlands, Texas, today.
