After diagnosing the cause of your neck pain, the Town Center Orthopaedics team creates a personalized treatment plan for you.
Physical therapy forms the underpinning of the most successful treatment programs for neck pain. Stretching and strengthening exercises help to keep your neck mobile and improve blood flow, which reduces swelling. Posture reeducation and joint mobilization and manipulation can be useful too.
There are also passive forms of physical therapy available such as heat and ice treatments, therapeutic massage, electrical stimulation, and ultrasound therapy. Medications that relieve pain and reduce inflammation can also be helpful, as can trigger point injections.
If these conservative approaches aren’t producing results, you might benefit from a spinal injection. These contain anti-inflammatory steroid medication or a local anesthetic, and often both. Examples include:
- Epidural steroid injection
- Facet joint injection
- Occipital nerve procedures
- Sympathetic nerve blocks
Other interventions that could help with persistent, severe neck pain include radiofrequency ablation and spinal cord stimulation, which help stop the nerves in your neck sending pain messages to your brain.
If you have a vertebral compression fracture in your neck – most likely as a result of osteoporosis – then vertebroplasty and kyphoplasty could be helpful.
These treatments involve having an injection of bone cement into the affected vertebrae to stabilize the vertebra. Kyphoplasty also uses a balloon technique to increase the height of the fractured vertebrae.
Regenerative medicine injections that boost healing and tissue repair could also be helpful. The Town Center Orthopaedics team offers platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy, prolotherapy, stem cell therapy, and Clarix® Flo placental tissue.
