Glen Carbon sits between Edwardsville and Maryville. That puts it a few minutes from Anderson Hospital. Dr. Gurpreet Singh Padda, MD, MBA, MHP has full staff privileges there. We are licensed in Illinois and in Missouri.
We are an interventional pain practice. Our starting point is simple. Pain has a source. The source can usually be found. Treating it beats managing the symptom forever.
We will not just refill an opioid prescription and ignore the pain behind it. Dr. Padda is board certified in addiction medicine. The goal here is to cut your medication load, not keep it going. If that is not what you want, it is fairer to say so now than after you make the drive.
Almost everything we do rests on this one idea. Patients rarely hear it explained before it is done to them. It is worth twelve hundred words of anyone’s time. Here is the short version.
The problem. Low back pain can start in a disc, a facet joint, a sacroiliac joint or a nerve root. Their symptoms overlap a lot. Scans often show flaws in parts that cause no pain at all. An exam narrows the list. It does not settle it.
The test. We place a small amount of local anesthetic (numbing medicine) right at one suspect — one medial branch nerve, one nerve root, one joint — using fluoroscopic or ultrasound guidance. Contrast dye confirms the medicine went where we aimed it.
The reasoning. If that part is making your pain, numbing it should cut the pain a lot while the medicine lasts. If the pain does not change, that part is likely not the source. Treating it would have been a waste.
What you are asked to do. You will write down how much relief you got and for how long, often in a simple diary. This is not paperwork. It is the real result of the test. A vague memory two weeks later is not usable data. Move around afterward and do something that normally hurts — a block judged while sitting still tells nobody anything.
Why it is sometimes repeated. One positive block can be a false positive more often than you would think. When the next step is something lasting, such as radiofrequency ablation, we confirm with a second block first. That is standard practice. It lowers the odds of an ablation that was never going to help.
What a negative result is worth. A block that does not help is not a failure or a wasted visit. It has ruled out one part, which is truly useful. It has also spared you a longer-lasting procedure aimed at the wrong target. This matters, because patients often read a negative block as “nothing works for me.”
Our offices are at 4477 Woodson Rd, St. Louis and 12174 Natural Bridge Rd, St. Louis. From Glen Carbon, take I-270 west across the river toward Lambert Airport — about thirty minutes in normal traffic.
Because of the distance, we try not to make you come twice. If a test procedure is clearly needed and you want to go ahead, we can often do it the same day as your first visit. Bring any scans you already have.
Sciatica and radiating leg pain, facet joint and sacroiliac joint pain, knee pain, migraine, and pain persisting after spine surgery.
Bring your scans on a disc or through a patient portal, not just the radiologist’s report. Bring a current list of your medicines. Bring a note of what you have tried and what it did. A past injection that helped for a short time is a useful clue. A vague memory of it is not.
Mostly it tests. Relief lasts as long as the numbing medicine. Sometimes we add a steroid for a longer effect. We pick the lasting treatment based on what the block showed.
For how one block can be both diagnostic and therapeutic, read Nerve Blocks in St. Louis.
That is the expected result, and it is good news — it confirms the target. The next step is a longer-lasting treatment aimed at the same spot.
No. You stay awake under local anesthetic, with no sedation, because sedation would blur the result. Your report of the pain is the result we are measuring.
Within hours. That is the point of the design.
Here it means finding the part that is making your pain and treating that source. We do not just manage the symptom forever. An exam narrows the list of suspects. A diagnostic block under fluoroscopic or ultrasound guidance confirms which one it is. Then the lasting treatment, such as radiofrequency ablation, is aimed at that confirmed target. The goal is to cut your medication load, not keep it going.
Because of the drive from Glen Carbon, we try not to make you come twice. If a test procedure is clearly needed and you want to go ahead, we can often do it the same day as your first visit. A second block to confirm is standard before a lasting treatment such as radiofrequency ablation. That is because one positive block can be a false positive.
Yes. We are licensed in Illinois and in Missouri. Dr. Gurpreet Singh Padda, MD, MBA, MHP has full staff privileges at Anderson Hospital, a few minutes from Glen Carbon. Our two St. Louis offices are about thirty minutes away on I-270 in normal traffic. Bring any scans you already have to the first visit.
Call us or request an appointment. More detail on our Illinois pain management page.
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Same-day and emergency appointments are available.