Chronic back pain is a difficult issue to manage on your own, especially when your pain limits what you can do.
At Castle Hills Family Practice, Hormazd Sanjana, MD and our skilled medical team have extensive experience diagnosing and treating many of the underlying issues that contribute to back pain.
We offer several solutions, including minimally invasive epidural injections, to ease chronic pain and restore your mobility. Our goal is to get you back to work and to enjoy your favorite activities as quickly and safely as possible.
Why your back hurts so much
Acute back pain typically lasts less than six weeks as a result of muscle sprains from overexertion or minor trauma. Most of the time, you can manage acute back pain with over-the-counter anti-inflammatories, heat or ice therapy, and plenty of rest.
When your back pain is chronic and lasts longer than six months, it may be the result of underlying issues that affect your spine. Common causes of chronic back pain that we treat include:
- Scoliosis
- Herniated disc
- Osteoarthritis
- Facet joint dysfunction
- Spinal stenosis (spinal narrowing)
- Degenerative disc disease
At our practice, we also address spinal fractures that result from car accidents, sports injuries, or degenerative conditions like osteoporosis.
Injectable pain interventions for chronic back pain
If you’ve tried medications or physical therapy without success, our team at Castle Hills Family Practice may recommend minimally invasive procedures to ease your pain.
One popular and effective method we offer for long-term pain relief is an epidural injection. These injections deliver steroid medications directly into the epidural space of your spine that surrounds your nerve roots and spinal cord.
The steroids reduce inflammation that irritates spinal nerves and soft tissues. This reduction inflammation method helps decrease the severity of your back pain and can also restore range of motion in your spine.
We can also add anesthetic medications into your injection which relieves pain by blocking signals that travel from your nerves to your brain.
Lifestyle changes can boost your epidural injection results
After you receive your epidural injection, you may not see the full benefit of your treatment for several hours or days. However, as your spine mobility increases and your pain diminishes, you can make lifestyle changes to help your pain relief last longer.
Our team can recommend ways to improve your posture, especially if you sit at a desk for long periods of time. If you work a manual labor job, we may advise wearing a back brace to prevent muscle strains and irritation of your spinal nerves that can trigger pain.
You may benefit from continuing physical therapy sessions and doing exercises at home to help strengthen the muscles that support your spine.
Daily exercise also helps you maintain a healthy body weight to take unnecessary pressure off your spine, so you can be free of back pain and enjoy a more physically active life.
To learn more about the benefits of epidural injections for chronic back pain, call one of our Castle Hills Family Practice offices in San Antonio, Texas or book a consultation online today.
