Written by Josh Suderman, MD
Low back pain is one of the most common reasons someone visits a doctor and one of the most common reasons people are referred to our clinic. Low back pain has many different causes and can impact a person’s life in many ways. There are multiple parts of the low back pain that can cause pain. These include the muscles, joints, ligaments that connect the bones of the back together, discs, and nerves. Most often, we see patients that have pain due to gradual wear and tear on these parts of the back due to the process of arthritis.
Also, we treat injuries such as muscle strains and problems of the discs in the back that affect the nerves and can cause leg pain along with back pain. Rarely back pain can be due to diseases such as cancer or problems with blood vessels that cause pain due to poor blood flow. Similar to our approach for chronic pain management in general, as discussed in a previous blog entry, we emphasize multidisciplinary and multimodal approaches to the management of low back pain. This means that we utilize multiple different techniques or modalities to treat low back pain, including medications and injections.
We also work closely with healthcare providers in different disciplines or fields of medicine to help manage pain in a multidisciplinary manner. This may include physical therapy, pain psychology, and working with other specialty physicians in addition to coordinating your care with your primary care physician. We may also order additional testing such as x-rays or MRI scans to better understand what may be causing your back pain in addition to relying heavily on your story and your symptoms to inform us on what treatment options are appropriate for your condition. After listening to your symptoms and the story of how your low back pain developed, we can then develop a focused, personalized treatment plan for your back pain symptoms. We look forward to the opportunity to see you here at Javery pain Institute!