Our Services / Spine Care

More than 16 million adults suffer from chronic back pain. If you’re among them, seek out the variety of surgical and nonsurgical treatment options available from the experienced providers at Mercer-Bucks Orthopaedics with offices in Hamilton, Lawrenceville, and Princeton, New Jersey, or Langhorne, Pennsylvania. Call the most convenient location today, or request your spine care appointment online.

What types of conditions benefit from spine care?

If you overstretch the muscles and ligaments supporting the spine during a heavy lift or sports incident, you may experience an acute back injury that needs spine care. 

Spine care also benefits patients who have experienced degenerative changes to the spine that lead to conditions, such as:

• Herniated disc
• Facet joint arthritis
• Spinal stenosis
• Bone spurs
• Degenerative disc disease

Spine care includes surgical and nonsurgical solutions to help alleviate your pain and restore function.

What symptoms suggest I might need spine care?

Changes in the spine often compress nearby nerves. When your nerves are compressed, you may experience sensations, such as tingling, burning, or an electric-shock pain, which travels along the nerve. It’s not unusual to lose feeling in the arm or leg affected by the pinched nerve.

An example of compressed nerve pain is sciatica. Your sciatic nerve is the largest nerve in your body and originates in your lower spine, and travels down your leg. When pinched, you experience intense pain, tingling, and pins-and-needles sensations that radiate down the affected leg. 

What is involved in spine care?

After reviewing your medical history, discussing your symptoms, and performing diagnostic imaging, if needed, your provider creates a customized treatment plan based on your unique health care needs.

Spine care often starts with conservative therapies such as physical therapy and pain medications. If pain and dysfunction don’t improve, you may receive other treatments, like nerve blocks and corticosteroid injections.

Other injection therapy may include:

Trigger point injections

Injections send anesthetic into bundles of tight muscles that are causing your back or neck pain to relieve your pain. Trigger point injections can offer near immediate relief.

Epidural steroid injections

Epidural steroid injections can relieve pain caused by a pinched or compressed nerves in the spine. This treatment can help with pain due to herniated discs, narrowing of the spinal canal, or arthritis.

Facet injections

Small joints located along your spine are known as the facet joints. Overuse or arthritis can cause these joints to ache and be quite painful. Facet injections include a numbing medication to relieve joint pain as well as a time-released cortisone medication that reduces inflammation in the long term.

In complex cases, spine surgery may be required to help you get relief. The goal of spine surgery is to correct the underlying abnormality with minimal impact on surrounding tissues. 

If you suffer back or neck pain and need spine care, contact Mercer-Bucks Orthopaedics today. Reach out to one of the offices by phone or use this website to set up an appointment.