Attention to Common Pains!

Neurosurgery Specialist Op.Dr.Mustafa Örnek gave important information about the subject. Pain is actually a warning system. There are 3 types of pain. These are somatic, visceral and neuropathic. In all three types, pain can be acute or chronic. Acute pain is pain that lasts for a short time and can usually be easily described and observed. Chronic pain is pain that lasts more than 3 months. These types of pain can be felt at the same time or alone at different times.

The most common pains are headache, neck pain, shoulder pain, low back pain, muscle pain and back pain.

Low back and neck hernias, facet joint pain due to calcification of the waist and neck joints and sacroiliac joint pathologies constitute the majority of patients who applied to the neurosurgery outpatient clinic due to pain.

Radiofrequency therapy is used safely today in back and neck hernias that do not require surgery after examinations and tests, and in pain due to thickening and calcification in the joints that connect the upper and lower vertebrae, which we call facet joints.

The radiofrequency method, which has been used in the treatment of pain for nearly 50 years, shows its effect by making a nerve block with the effect of heat. There are two types of this method, which has been used in the treatment of pain for a long time. In the traditional radiofrequency method, nerve degeneration was performed with the effect of heat at temperatures such as 60-80 degrees by giving a continuous current to the tissues. In the pulsed method we use, it is aimed to treat pain without causing damage to the nerves and surrounding tissues by giving a lower temperature intermittently. It is the intermittent radiofrequency method that we use in the method that is now accepted.

Op.Dr.Mustafa Örnek said, “The radiofrequency method has several advantages over open surgery. Radiofrequency applied patients can return to their daily lives in an average of a few hours. In addition, complications such as bleeding, infection and nerve damage are almost non-existent in this method.