Dr. Auzenne is pleased to offer the following procedures to help treat and manage your back pain:
Caudal epidural steroid injections are again very similar to translaminar epidural steroid injections or transforaminal. The concept is the same; we are trying to apply local anesthetic and steroids to an area where there is nerve irritation due to a disc herniation or stenosis of the nerve or the neuroforamen. ... MORE
Discograms are another procedure we use to assist surgeons in determining whether they should be doing surgery at certain levels. Discography was meant to really treat discogenic back pain... MORE
Facet joint injections are also similarly used like medial branch nerve blocks but more definitive as a treatment modality. In some patients who have arthritic changes of facet joints in the spine, there is an inflammatory process that occurs... MORE
Lumbar sympathetic nerve blocks are very interesting. They are used to treat neuropathic pain or sympathetically maintain pain. There are several types of nerves in the body, two of which we hear about.... MORE
Medial branch nerve blocks are essentially diagnostic blocks to denervate the facet joints where patients have pain.... MORE
Radiofrequency ablation is a technology that was employed over the last probably ten to twelve years, or even longer than that, where we are able to take a radiofrequency that causes a localized increase in temperature around a nerve to cause destruction of the nerve. So for sensory nerves we are able to use that to control pain.... MORE
Selective nerve root blocks are commonly used at the request of your surgeon. In this case we are trying to identify if the herniated disc is truly causing compression of a single nerve root that is manifesting itself as pain. ... MORE
Like a transforaminal epidural steroid injection we would use really to treat somebody’s leg pain, primarily, versus back. You would probably get some back pain relief also, but surgeons often ask us to do that procedure prior to consideration of surgery.... MORE
Trigger point injections are used quite commonly in the office space. We use that for what’s called myofascial pain, or trigger points, where you have tightness in the myofascial band, or a localized area of the muscle that is a well circumscribed area of pain. You may have experienced this in your shoulder muscles, or your biceps, triceps, anywhere in your back that has been causing nagging pain for several days to weeks. By placing a needle into this trigger point area with either local anesthetics or anti-inflammatories or steroids, we are able to kind of disrupt that pain pathway and hopefully provide the patient with some relief.... MORE
Vertebral augmentation is primarily used for patients who have suffered a compression fracture. It can be compression fractures from cancer related metastases or it can be traumatic. As we get older, our bones sometimes get thinner; osteoporosis sets in and puts in a situation where any slight trauma to the spine can result in a fracture.... MORE