Sperling Medical Group

reading & research

Facet Pain

Landmark clinical study shows MRgFUS effective for bone mets pain.

A Landmark Study on Palliation of Bone Mets PainWhen a primary cancer such as cancer of the breast, prostate or lung spreads to the bone (bone mets), treatment strategies become complex. In today’s world of oncology, better systemic chemotherapies can add months and even years to a patient’s life; in addition, local cancer control of […] KEEP READING

Understanding cartilage increases awareness of its importance.

What You Should Know About CartilageOne of the most fascinating components of the human body is cartilage, an incredibly versatile material. Trying to describe cartilage is like the six blind men who try to figure out what an elephant is: “The elephant is like a pillar,” said the man who touched his leg. “Oh no! […] KEEP READING

Essential tremor gets worse in stressful situations.

How Stress Makes Essential Tremor WorseEssential tremor (ET) is the most common form of uncontrollable rhythmic shaking, though it is sometimes misdiagnosed as Parkinson’s disease. The involuntary trembling results from abnormal communication between certain areas of the brain (cerebellum, thalamus, and brain stem). It is estimated that 10 million Americans suffer from ET, though many […] KEEP READING

Describing what facet joint pain feels like can be a challenge.

Words Can’t Describe Facet Joint Pain The whole notion of pain, and how every individual experiences pain, is up for debate. We don’t know how another person experiences pain … Miriam Toews If you have back pain, did you ever try to describe it to someone? Doctors can assess the amount of pain using a scale […] CONTINUE

CATEGORY:
Facet Pain

Study confirms merits of MRgFUS for facet pain.

Spanish Study Confirms Merits of MRgFUS for Facet Pain It’s always exciting when a new way comes along to manage chronic pain with less medication, invasiveness and risk of complications. Lower back pain from facet joint osteoarthritis that does not respond to physical therapy, exercise, heat/cold applications and over the counter anti-inflammatories is particularly difficult […] CONTINUE

CATEGORY:
Facet Pain

MRgFUS is a noninvasive alternative to facet pain injections.

4 Needles You May Not Want in Your Back One of the conventional treatments for facet joint pain is x-ray guided injections into the inflamed joints. The facet joints are located between each vertebra (backbone) where the small outer projections of one vertebra meet those above and below. These joints, cushioned with cartilage, allow spinal […] CONTINUE

CATEGORY:
Facet Pain

10 facts about your bones may fascinate you.

Ten Facts About Your Bones How much do you know about your skeleton and its bones? Most of us don’t think about our inner architecture every day, much like working or shopping in a multistory building without thinking about the framework of steel that supports it. Here are ten fascinating facts about your bones: You […] CONTINUE

CATEGORY:
Bone mets

MRI can track bone mets treatment response in prostate cancer

Prostate Cancer Bone Mets: Tracking Response to Treatment Using MRI MRI offers new hope for evaluating how well prostate cancer bone metastasis (PCa bone mets) are responding to chemotherapy. An exciting new paper (April, 2017) by a British team at the Institute of Cancer Research (Sutton, England) reports their original pilot study confirming MRI tracking […] CONTINUE

CATEGORY:
Bone mets

Acupuncture is used in Korea to reduce tremor.

Essential Tremor and CAM, Part I: Acupuncture and Pharmacopuncture I thought it would be interesting to do a small series of blogs on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) treatments for essential tremor (ET). Standard medicine (also called Western, allopathic, mainstream or conventional medicine) was slow to embrace CAM until roughly the last four decades, and […] CONTINUE

CATEGORY:
Essential Tremor

SMG is the first to treat 2 ET patients on the same day.

First Center to Treat Two ET Patients with MRgFUS on the Same Day The Sperling Medical Group is the first U.S. center to have treated two essential tremor (ET) patients on the same day using MRI-guided Focused Ultrasound (MRgFUS). What was truly remarkable was the immediate improvement experienced by each of the patients. In one […] CONTINUE

CATEGORY:
Essential Tremor

Steroid injections cause thinner knee cartilage – does this happen in facet joints?

Do Steroid Injections Damage Facet Cartilage? When patients have back pain that is not responding to noninvasive interventions (oral anti-inflammatories, heat/cold applications, exercise, posture improvement, physical therapy, etc.) the cause may be arthritis of the spine’s facet joints. The standard “definitive” diagnosis is a nerve block (numbing anesthetic) injected into the joint to interrupt pain […] CONTINUE

CATEGORY:
Facet Pain

Bone mets patients have complex needs beyond the clinical.

5 Important Needs of Bone Mets Patients Great health care is not just about taking care of the body. “Comprehensive cancer care” is a phrase that has gained wide use. In large part, cancer patients are living longer with their disease than was possible even two or three decades ago. Clinicians now recognize that quality […] CONTINUE

CATEGORY:
Bone mets

The evidence regarding facet joint injections is inconclusive.

Facet Joint Injection Benefits are Hard to Prove Those who live in developed nations enjoy many benefits that are easily taken for granted. There is enough food to go around, dwellings are climate-controlled, transportation and travel are expedited by conveyances capable of both speed and safety, technology brings efficiency and imagination to both work and […] CONTINUE

CATEGORY:
Facet Pain