Living With Chronic Pain? How Interventional Pain Management Can Help

Chronic pain is different from the temporary discomfort that follows an injury. It can stick around for months or years, and make work, sleep, and everyday activities more difficult.

If you’ve been living with pain for a long time, you’ve probably already tried medication, rest, physical therapy, or injections and may still feel like you’re not getting enough relief. 

When the usual treatment approaches don’t work, the question usually becomes: What else can I do?

At Georgia Pain Management in Woodstock, Georgia, our board-certified pain management physician, James Ellner, MD, uses interventional pain management to manage persistent pain with targeted, nonsurgical procedures. 

Rather than simply masking your symptoms, our treatment plans focus on the underlying issues and pain pathways that contribute to your discomfort.

If you’re bothered by chronic pain, here’s how interventional pain management can fit into your treatment plan.

Interventional pain management targets specific sources of pain

Chronic pain can come from many places. Arthritis, spinal problems, irritated nerves, joint conditions, neuropathy, and complex regional pain syndrome are just a few examples. Interventional pain management uses procedures that target the involved area more directly. 

Depending on your condition, that could mean treatment focused on inflammation around a nerve or on blocking pain signals to the brain, rather than relying solely on medication that works throughout your entire body.

Different types of pain call for different procedures

There isn’t one interventional treatment that works for every chronic pain condition. Dr. Ellner first considers where your pain starts, what’s causing it, how long you’ve had it, and the treatments you’ve already tried.

For example, epidural steroid injections place anti-inflammatory medication near irritated spinal nerves. 

Joint injections target painful areas such as the hip or knee, while nerve blocks interrupt signals from specific nerves and may also help identify the source of pain.

For certain conditions, Dr. Ellner may recommend radiofrequency ablation, which uses controlled energy to disable nerves responsible for transmitting pain. 

Spinal cord stimulation is another option for some patients with persistent nerve-related pain that hasn’t responded adequately to other treatments.

Interventional treatment can help you do more

Pain relief is important, but the bigger goal is improving what you’re able to do each day. When your pain becomes more manageable, you find it easier to walk, exercise, sleep, work, or participate in physical therapy.

That’s also why interventional treatment often works alongside other forms of care. Dr. Ellner creates a plan based on how pain affects your life rather than expecting a single procedure to solve the entire problem.

You don’t have to keep settling for uncontrolled pain

If chronic pain is still disrupting your life despite the treatments you’ve tried, it’s worth finding out whether a more targeted approach makes sense.

At Georgia Pain Management, Dr. Ellner evaluates the source of your symptoms and discusses interventional treatments that best fit your condition and preferences. 

Call our Woodstock office to schedule an appointment or book a visit online to explore your options for better control of chronic pain.