Rhizotomy
Find Relief from Neck and Back Pain
About 20 percent of the patients that we have the privilege of treating suffer from facet pain, which means that our dynamic team of medical professionals has extensive experience dealing with such cases. One of the most common, influential, minimally invasive procedures that we offer at our spine centers is rhizotomy. Used at all of our clinics near Dallas, this treatment is proven to be successful at helping manage and eventually treat patients’ neck and back pain. Our ability to determine the underlying cause of your pain and present you with an treatment plan that yields optimal results is just one of the reasons that Frisco Spine is the premier choice among patients in need of quality, personalized, comprehensive spine care.
How Rhizotomy Works
When performing a rhizotomy, our physiatritrists cauterize those nerves intervating the facet joints and those nerves responsible for chronic back pain and spasms. For patients with low back pain, rhizotomy may offer long-lasting relief from facet pain. It works by immobilizing and burning the sensory nerve that is located within the facet joint of the spine. The rhizotomy that we most commonly perform at Frisco Spine is specifically geared toward improving facet pain and providing patients with the relief that they deserve. Most of the patients whom we diagnose and treat with this conservative option have disc problems that stem from damaged nerves within the facet joint.
Burning Nerves
“Burning nerves” is the phrase that physicians most commonly use to describe rhizotomy. When many patients receive the news that the nodes in their neck need to be burned, they don’t understand exactly what such a procedure actually entails. Using state-of-the-art technology, our physicians insert an electrical probe into the sensory nerve nearest to your damaged facet joint. Our physicians do this to disable the sending and receiving of signals to and from the brain. Those signals are what force your body to feel symptoms relating to your condition. By burning these nerves, our team can effectively treat your pain.
What Is A Facet Joint?
There is a pair of facet joints at each level of your vertebral column. These joints allow your spine to move and are typically in constant motion. While offering stability to your spine’s facet joints, the nodes often become worn out, damaged, or degenerated. When this occurs, your bones react by developing bone spurs and enlarged joints, and can even overdevelop, pinching the nerve root that lies directly under your joint.
Benefits
There are several benefits to undergoing a facet rhizotomy. In general, the procedure has a high success rate in terms of its ability to relieve neck and back pain. Rhizotomy:
- Is a low-risk procedure
- Involves a quick recovery period
- Is minimally invasive
- Produces results that can last from six months to a year
- Can be repeated as necessary
- Sometimes prevents the need for more extensive surgery
- Re-stabilizes the joints and spine
- Protects the spine, joints, and nerves from future harm
- Can be combined with multiple non-surgical pain management procedures for improved results
Fixing the Problem before It’s Too Late
If you have documented arthritis of the neck that is causing neck or spine pain (facet arthropathy), worn out or degenerated discs, or a diagnosed facet joint condition, then rhizotomy may provide you with the relief you have been searching for. At Frisco Spine, near Dallas, our Plano, Frisco, Denton, Carrollton, and McKinney teams educate patients about rhizotomy and other conservative alternatives to more invasive surgery so that they can make the most informed and confident decisions regarding their treatment.
It is important for our patients to know that conditions resulting in faucet damage need to be treated in order for symptoms to be relieved. Similar to a motor vehicle, the spine is one large unit composed of hundreds of intricate working parts. If the alignment in your car needs adjusting but you don’t fix it, your tires will begin to wear unevenly, you may break an axel, and you begin to strain other functioning elements of your car. In the same way, if the alignment and condition of your spine are left untreated, you can cause further damage to it and the rest of your body. Rhizotomy is just one of the procedures that we offer to patients who are in need of having their spine serviced before it’s beyond the point of conservative repair.
Contact Frisco Spine
If you are interested in learning more about the surgical and non-surgical options, such as rhizotomy, contact our spine center near Dallas today! Schedule an appointment with our talented doctors to learn more about the difference we can make in your quality of life!
