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If you suffer from chronic back pain, there are probably two questions on your mind: what is causing my discomfort and how will it be treated? To answer the former, you should consult a back pain specialist like Twin Cities’ iSpine Pain Physicians. Regarding the latter, your doctor will determine the most appropriate form of medical intervention, the most common being back injections or surgery.  

Both of these treatments provide chronic pain relief but by different means. During an injection, your physician will administer an anesthetic and an anti-inflammatory to the affected area, temporarily alleviating your symptoms. Surgeries, on the other hand, involve the alteration of a spinal structure, making them more invasive than injections. They also tend to provide longer-lasting chronic pain relief.

The dissimilarities between these treatments, however, surpass the procedures themselves. Here, iSpine’s back pain specialists explain three additional ways back injections and surgeries differ:back pain

  • Diagnosis: Some spinal disorders respond best to back injections rather than surgeries and vice versa. Facet joint syndrome, for example, is most often treated with a facet joint injection. In contrast, spinal stenosis requires surgery.
  • Timeframe: If the source of your back pain has yet to be diagnosed, your physician may prescribe injections to minimize your discomfort while they pinpoint the underlying cause. Some specialists even use injections as a tool to help determine which structures are affected. With its diagnostic capabilities as well as its efficacy, this non-invasive procedure is often physicians' first approach to chronic pain relief. Surgeries, on the other hand, are typically used later in the treatment process once your symptoms are better understood. chronic pain relief
  • Severity: Everyone experiences back pain differently, meaning injections aren’t always the best course of action. In more severe cases, your physician may forgo conservative procedures altogether and instead refer you to an orthopedic surgeon. Back pain that accompanies the loss of bowel or bladder control, for example, signifies a medical emergency and requires immediate surgery. Fortunately, conditions like cauda equina syndrome are rare, and most pain can be treated non-surgically.

While iSpine Pain Physicians only provides surgery referrals, they do provide a variety of back injections in their Chaska, Crystal, Delano and Maple Grove offices. To learn more about the non-operative treatments they offer, visit their website. To schedule an appointment with one of their back pain specialists, call them at (763) 201-8191 today.

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