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 Pain Management and How Regenerative Medicine Is Changing the Pain Management Field

On any given day in the United States, approximately 20% of adults — or one in five Americans — experience some form of chronic pain. What’s more, nearly half of people with chronic pain have the high-impact type, meaning their condition is so draining, undermining, or debilitating that it limits at least one major life activity.

As an integrative form of medicine that aims to get to the root of your discomfort and provide lasting relief, pain management incorporates a full scope of beneficial treatments and modalities, ranging from epidural injections and radiofrequency ablation (RFA) to cognitive strategies and physical therapy.

Today, thanks to the exciting and rapidly evolving advances in regenerative medicine, chronic pain management isn’t only about managing pain — it’s about healing damaged tissues at the cellular level and restoring pain-free mobility from the inside out. Here’s the difference between the modalities of pain management.

Conventional pain management

With the ultimate goal of helping you find long-term pain relief so you can get back to your normal routine and level of activity as soon as possible, interventional pain management takes a multidisciplinary approach that never focuses solely on your physical discomfort.

When it comes to addressing chronic musculoskeletal discomfort, the team of pain specialists at Associated Physicians Group believes that effective care in addition to treatment includes giving you the right skills, guidance, and support so you can reduce your pain and enhance your quality of life without having to rely on drug therapy. 

In many cases, patients with chronic pain can benefit from initial pain relief techniques that don’t rely on ongoing drug therapy, such as:

Steroid injections

Steroid injections — usually in the form of cortisone shots — ease inflammation to help relieve chronic knee, hip, and shoulder pain caused by arthritis, injury, or simply degeneration.

Epidural steroid injections

Receiving steroid injections in your spine reduces inflammation to help relieve chronic back, neck, or sciatic nerve pain, and improves range of motion.

Facet joint injections

If a degenerative condition or a physical injury is the underlying cause of persistent back or neck pain, a facet joint injection can provide immediate relief.

Radiofrequency ablation

This minimally invasive treatment uses florouscopic to guide a radiofrequency (RF) needle toward a problematic nerve. A small electrical current passes through the needle to the nerve, where it disrupts the nerve’s ability to transmit pain signals.

By reducing inflammation and controlling pain quickly, these strategies help restore normal range of motion so you can begin physical therapy comfortably and work your way toward total rehabilitation.

Regenerative pain medicine

While these traditional pain management techniques are invaluable when it comes to getting a handle on chronic pain, the effects of anti-inflammatory injections wear off after a few months.

While you can certainly use physical therapy and lifestyle strategies to improve your pain condition within that space of time, it’s not uncommon for some amount of pain to eventually reemerge.

That’s where regenerative medicine comes in. Using powerful regenerative cells and growth factors from your own body, this groundbreaking therapy stimulates and accelerates your body’s natural ability to repair, rebuild, and regenerate its soft tissues. Here at Orthocenter, we offer two kinds of regenerative therapy for pain relief:

Stem cell therapy

Using mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) harvested from your own body, stem cell therapy aims to promote healing from the inside out. When stem cells are injected into an injured, damaged, or inflamed area, they transform themselves into whatever type of cell is needed to regenerate fresh, healthy tissue and accelerate the healing process.

PRP therapy

Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy uses a small amount of your own highly concentrated blood platelets to alleviate pain and restore function. When PRP is injected directly into the source of your pain, its powerful growth factors promote active healing and rapid tissue regeneration.

Regenerative medicine is an ideal solution for chronic pain caused by an injury or age-related wear-and-tear (osteoarthritis). Unlike conventional, anti-inflammatory injections, which only provide temporary pain relief, regenerative medicine restores healthier tissues for the kind of lasting relief that supports your long-term health and well-being.

APG Pain Solutions

By taking a personal approach to pain management that considers all aspects of your unique situation, the team at Associated Physicians Group is dedicated to ensuring your treatment plan is as efficient and effective as possible.

Most people benefit from a combined approach that uses conventional pain management strategies to provide immediate pain relief, physical therapy to promote movement and restore function, and regenerative medicine to stimulate long-term healing, repair, and renewal.