Clayton is fifteen minutes from our Woodson Road office, and that matters more than it sounds. Pain treatment that requires repeat visits — a diagnostic block, then the result, then the treatment aimed at what the block confirmed — only works if getting there is not itself a project. From the county seat it is a straight run up I-170.
Take I-170 north from Clayton and exit toward Lambert. The office sits at 4477 Woodson Road, Suite 100, St. Louis, MO 63134, immediately beside St. Louis Lambert International Airport. Parking is on site and level with the entrance, which is worth knowing if walking any distance is part of the problem you are coming to discuss.
Hours are Monday to Friday, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM. You do not need a referral from another physician, and you do not need to be an existing patient. Both offices, including the second at 12174 Natural Bridge Road in Bridgeton, are on the locations page.
Most people arriving from Clayton have already had imaging and at least one injection. The common thread is not that the treatments were wrong — it is that nobody established which structure was producing the pain before treating it.
Degenerative changes show up on scans in people with no pain at all, so a finding on a film does not prove that finding is your problem. A diagnostic block settles it differently: anesthetize one structure, and observe whether the pain it is supposed to be producing goes away. That is a test with a result rather than an interpretation, and it is the difference between aiming and guessing.
The reasoning is set out in what imaging can and cannot show about pain, and the case where the scan reads normal but the pain is real in deep low back pain with a normal MRI.
The pattern from central county skews toward people who cannot lose months to sequential trial and error — courts, offices and hospitals all sit within a few blocks of each other, and the working day does not pause for a pain problem.
That shapes what gets used. Facet joint injections and radiofrequency ablation once a diagnostic response is confirmed. Sacroiliac joint injection where the pain sits low and to one side. Epidural steroid injection and selective nerve root block where symptoms travel down a limb. Electrodiagnostic testing when the question is whether a nerve is actually conducting.
Where pain has an autonomic, burning character, CRPS and RSD treatment and ketamine therapy are available. The behavioral component is delivered in-house rather than referred out — see counseling for chronic pain.
Diagnostic imaging, electrodiagnostic testing and image-guided procedures are all on site. That means a visit can often move from question to answer without a separate appointment somewhere else, and where a same-day procedure is appropriate it can be discussed at the first visit rather than scheduled weeks out — see same-day and emergency visits.
If you are already taking opioids, the aim is to treat the pain generator so that less medication is needed over time, and to avoid withdrawal during any reduction. That approach is described under opioid stewardship.
About fifteen minutes up I-170 outside rush hour, with on-site parking level with the entrance. Both offices and directions are on the locations page.
Not by itself. The more useful question is whether the structure treated was the one generating the pain, which a diagnostic block can establish. See choosing a pain specialist after treatment has not helped.
Yes. No referral is required and you do not need to be an existing patient. You can arrange a visit through the appointment request form.
Yes, and it is the norm rather than the exception. Findings from diagnostic testing are what your primary care physician or surgeon needs in order to decide anything — see orthopedic surgeon, neurosurgeon, or pain physician.
Normal imaging is common in people with real, treatable pain, and it does not close the question. See what imaging can and cannot show about pain.
To be evaluated by Dr. Gurpreet Singh Padda, MD, MBA, MHP, request an appointment, call (314) 481-5000, or text (314) 886-5902. The practice serves the St. Louis region across Missouri and Illinois. Nearby communities have their own pages, including St. Louis, Chesterfield, Ferguson and Bridgeton.
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Same-day and emergency appointments are available.