Vertebroplasty Procedures
Vertebroplasty is one option available to people who have experienced spinal fractures. Although it’s not an appropriate choice for every situation, the physicians at Pain Care do sometimes recommend and perform vertebroplasty for our patients in the Metro Atlanta, Georgia, area. Our aim is always to provide our patients with the relief they seek while keeping treatment as minimally invasive as possible – meaning that we take every step to help patients avoid the need for highly invasive open spine surgery.
Pain Care’s experienced physicians specialize in examining, diagnosing, and treating people in and around Atlanta, GA, who have chronic pain. When the root of chronic neck or back pain is a fractured vertebra, sometimes repairing the fracture itself can provide patients with rapid relief. In order to achieve these results, a vertebroplasty is performed, using the following steps:
- With the patient lying facedown, the physician administers a relaxing medication or uses anesthesia to begin the vertebroplasty.
- The site around the injection area is then numbed, and a fluoroscope (a machine that displays X-ray images in real time) is used to ensure proper positioning of the needle.
- The physician guides the needle to the damaged vertebra and carefully injects bone cement into it. This may take two injections to complete.
- Because bone cement can take about an hour to set, the patient may need to lie face up while the cement hardens and stabilizes the spine.
Recovery from vertebroplasty is usually simple; the injection area may require a bandage and the patient may experience some soreness following the procedure, but in many cases, the pain is alleviated quickly.
For more information about vertebroplasty – or any of the other minimally invasive procedures that we offer in the Metro Atlanta, GA, area – contact Pain Care today.
