Most pain sites are organized around what the clinic does. This one is organized around what hurts, because that is how you actually arrive here — with a symptom, not with a procedure in mind.
Below are the conditions we treat, grouped by where the problem sits. Each links to a fuller explanation of what it is, how it presents, and how it gets diagnosed — and from there to the treatments that apply. If what you have is not listed, that is not a reason to assume we cannot help. It is a reason to call.
Two starting points, written for people who have a symptom rather than a diagnosis:
“Back pain” is a symptom, not a diagnosis. Several different structures produce pain that feels similar from the outside and responds to entirely different treatment. These pages cover each one.
Nerve pain behaves differently from tissue pain. It burns, shoots or feels electrical, it often appears where nothing looks damaged, and it rarely responds to anti-inflammatories. It has to be recognized as nerve pain before anything sensible can be done about it.
Pain that does not stay in one place, or that has stopped behaving like an injury, is often centrally mediated — the nervous system itself has become the amplifier. That is a real, physical process, and it changes what works.
The sequence is deliberately diagnostic before it is therapeutic.
Examination comes first, and it is more informative than most patients expect — provocative maneuvers stress specific structures and narrow the field considerably. Imaging is read against your symptoms rather than in isolation, because degenerative findings are common in people with no pain at all, and a scan that does not match the complaint is a trap rather than an answer.
Where the source is still ambiguous, a diagnostic block settles it. A small volume of local anesthetic placed precisely, under ultrasound or fluoroscopic guidance, either abolishes the pain temporarily or does not. That is a test with an answer, and it is what separates a treatment plan from a sequence of guesses.
If you want the framework behind all of this, see how pain is classified and why the category changes the treatment.
Chronic pain does not sit apart from the rest of your physiology. Uncontrolled blood sugar changes how nerves conduct and heal. Poor sleep lowers pain thresholds measurably. Inflammatory load, thyroid function and nutritional deficiencies all alter how pain is generated and perceived.
This practice treats those drivers alongside the structural problem rather than referring them elsewhere and hoping. A plan that addresses only the mechanical finding, in a patient whose metabolic picture is driving the process, tends to produce exactly the pattern people describe when they arrive here — treatments that worked briefly and then stopped.
Call. The list above reflects the pages written so far, not the limits of the practice. Pain that has lasted more than six weeks without a clear trajectory toward resolution is worth a specialist opinion regardless of what it is called, and working out the label is part of the job rather than a prerequisite for booking.
If you are deciding whether it is time, our page on choosing a pain specialist sets out when it is worth going and what to ask, and whether you need a referral answers the question that delays most people.
No. Arriving without one is normal, and establishing it is the work of the first visit. See what to expect from pain management in St. Louis.
This is common and it does not mean the pain is imagined. Nerve pain, centrally mediated pain and several joint problems are all invisible on standard imaging. It means the diagnosis has to come from examination and diagnostic blocks instead. Read why medications and surgery may not fix pain.
Yes — headache syndromes, neuropathies, joint pain, visceral and cancer pain, and post-traumatic pain are all treated here. The spine is the largest category, not the only one.
No. You do not need a referral to be evaluated, and you do not need to be an existing patient. Same-day appointments are available for acute pain.
Yes. The practice is licensed in Missouri and Illinois and sees patients from across the Metro East. See pain management for Illinois patients.
Call (314) 481-5000 or request an appointment.
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Same-day and emergency appointments are available.