If you have had low back or neck surgery and you have persistent pain in either your back or neck, or persistent nerve pain in your arms or legs, our doctor at Park West Pain Management in Manhattan, New York, or Staten Island, NY would like you to know that there are other options available to help with your pain.

Surgery on the lumbar spine is the treatment of choice for certain lumbar disorders. Unfortunately, it can happen that low back surgery can give good initial relief with return of pain somewhere down the road. This pain can be severe and debilitating. There are other options for your pain other than repeat surgery. The first step is epidural injections. For some people these may provide adequate pain relief. There are several ways to perform these epidurals to make sure the pain medications are getting to the appropriate location, and depending what type of surgery you had, certain injections may be more appropriate than others. After epidural injections, some patients may be a candidate for neuromodulation, also known as spinal cord stimulation. You can see our page on spinal cord stimulation.

Spinal cord stimulation has been proven to be more effective in pain relief than repeat surgery in several studies.