How Do Cervical Medial Branch Blocks Work?
The facet joints run along the spine and connect the vertebrae. As you can imagine, they experience a great deal of movement throughout the day, which can result in a lot of wear and tear. When they become injured, the medial nerves, which run along the facet joints, send pain signals to the brain, alerting it of the injury.
Medial branch blocks are a form of spinal injection that blocks pain signals from the medial nerves from being sent to the brain. Our specialists can use these branch blocks to diagnose and treat your cervical pain.
How Can a Diagnosis Be Made With Medial Branch Blocks?
Once we have provided the injection, we will be looking for one of the following results:
- You experience no pain relief. If you don’t experience any relief in your symptoms, this is a sign that the pain may not be due to the facet joints.
- You experience pain relief for a few hours. This likely signifies that the facet joints are responsible for your pain, and we can move forward with a treatment option.
- You experience pain relief for a few days. This may signify not only that the facet joint is responsible but also that you can benefit from further treatment of the medial nerves.
You will likely know the results of your procedure relatively quickly, depending on when or if you experience pain relief.
Schedule a Consultation
Consult The Pain Experts of Arizona if you’re experiencing severe or chronic neck pain. Our team will do our best to provide you with a swift and accurate diagnosis so you can begin treatment as soon as possible. We have convenient locations in Mesa and Gilbert, AZ; contact our office at (480) 550-9393 today.
