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
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
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
MRI or Bone Scintigraphy: Which is Best? What comes to mind when you hear “nuclear”? Some people might think of a nuclear family. Others might think of nuclear energy. For most people, nuclear medicine will hardly be the first expression to pop into their heads. Yet nuclear medicine – which is not yet even 100 […] CONTINUE
What Causes Essential Tremor? Essential tremor (ET) is the most common movement disorder. It is characterized by involuntary rhythmic shaking of the hands, arms, head, voice or other areas of the body. It may be more pronounced during a deliberate action, such as reaching for something, buttoning a shirt, combing hair, etc. It is not […] CONTINUE
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
