Nerve & Neuropathy Pain Treatments

Nerve And Neuropathic Pain Treatments

Peripheral Nerve Blocks can be an extremely effective way of treating many types pain. There are an abundance of nerves providing innervation to all areas of the body and its organs – any of which can be targeted and blocked with a small amount of local anesthetic and other agents in order to provide dramatic pain relief. Many of these injections can be performed under fluoroscopic or ultrasound guidance including the pudendal, genitofemoral, ilioinguinal, iliohypogastric, lateral femoral cutaneous, obturator nerve, superior hypogastric, ganglion impar, greater and lesser occipital, facial, trigeminal, suprascapular, sciatic, femoral, cluneal, common peroneal, saphenous and other peripherial nerve blocks.

Epidural Injections can also be used to treat nerve pain as-well-as diagnose the source of your pain.

Lyftogt Perineural Injection Treatment® (Neuroprolotherapy)

This treatment, first discovered and later significantly developed by Dr. John Lyftogt (pronounced “Liftoff”) consists of a series of small injections immediately under the skin targeting painful areas where the nerves are sensitive, with simple and natural substances. The substance Dr. Lyftogt uses is a buffered D5W (dextrose 5% in sterile water) with a neutral pH of 7.4.

Dr Lyftogt was the first person to use D5W to effectively treat chronic neuropathic pain and disability. Dr. Lyftogt found that treating painful nerves is an effective way to treat and extinguish chronic neuropathic pain.

In initial studies Dr. Lyftogt published, the treatment was named Subcutaneous Prolotherapy, and later, Neural Prolotherapy, abbreviated as NPT. The confusion with traditional Prolotherapy (a significantly different treatment) resulted in the change of these names to the more descriptive term, Lyftogt Perineural Injection Treatment®. Some Americans refer to this treatment as PSI (perineural subcutaneous injections), or PNI (perineural injections). Anyone using these terms is in fact referring to Lyftogt Perineural Injection Treatment® with D5W, as discovered and developed by New Zealander Dr John Lyftogt.

Lyftogt P.I.T.® is a safe and effective treatment for painful conditions due to sport and occupation or other chronic non-malignant pain related issues.

Lyftogt P.I.T.® involves first making an accurate diagnosis of the cause of pain, which is usually due to an injured or non-healing sensory nerve causing pain and inflammation.

Every treatment aims to extinguish the pain. After the first treatment pain relief may last for a period of four hours to four days. Repeated treatments (6-8 sessions) usually done weekly, result in gradual reduction of the overall pain, with the aim of complete resolution – a zero pain score – and allow return of full function. Success rates vary between 80-100% depending on the condition. For most conditions recurrence is unlikely unless re-injury occurs.

The treatment is extremely safe; D5W is used as an IV solution in hospitals worldwide. Being mostly a subcutaneous treatment, and using only a half-inch needle, harm is minimized. There may be some bruising. No allergic reactions have yet been observed. Infection is extremely rare, calculated at about 1 in 300,000 injections. The only adverse reactions reported are temporary histamine induced welts at injection sites and extremely rare corn allergies. There are no reported issues of dependency.

Dr. Lyftogt says: “Pain is an enormous unmet need. Current treatment guidelines with antidepressants, antiepileptic and analgesics targeting Central Nervous System sensitization benefit less than 25% of patients (Canadian pain society 2013). Opioids as a last resort are now creating an iatrogenic epidemic of opioid dependency worldwide”.

“RCTs with D5W have been published for caudal epidurals for chronic low back pain, achilles tendonitis and carpal tunnel syndrome. We have published on 201 achilles tendons with a 92% success rate at 12-month follow up. Similar results have been published for chronic knee, compartment syndrome, elbow and shoulder pain”.

Neural Therapy is a treatment system for chronic pain and illness. It involves the injection of local anesthetics into autonomic ganglia, peripheral nerves, scars, glands, trigger points, and other tissues. It is believed to act through normalizing the illness-related dysfunction of the nervous system. Neural Therapy was originally developed in Germany by the Huneke brothers. It involves the injection of Procaine (also known as Novocaine), a common local anesthetic, into various but very specific areas. Neural Therapy is based on the theory that trauma can produce long-standing disturbances in the electrochemical function of tissues.

Nutritional Therapy and Exercise & Diet Counseling is also available.