For pain management in Troy, IL, our closest tie is the hospital. Troy sits at the I-55/70 junction, a short drive from Anderson Hospital in Maryville. Dr. Gurpreet Singh Padda, MD, MBA, MHP is on staff there with full privileges. We are licensed in Illinois and Missouri.
Troy has primary care and urgent care. It has no interventional pain practice. Your real choices are a hospital pain program or a private practice. Both mean a drive.
In return, you should get a diagnosis, not another prescription. A specialist should tell you which part is making your pain and prove it. If not, the drive was not worth it.
This is the most useful line to draw. It explains why one treatment helped a friend and did nothing for you. The two types act different, feel different, and respond to different things.
Mechanical pain comes from a part under load — a joint, a disc, a tendon, a ligament. People call it deep, aching, or sharp when they move. Some positions always make it worse, and others make it better. It stays fairly local, even when it spreads into the buttock or thigh. It generally responds to treatment aimed at that part: facet joint injection, sacroiliac joint treatment, radiofrequency ablation, or stabilizing a fracture.
Neuropathic pain comes from the nerve itself. People call it burning, electric, shooting, or pins and needles. Numbness often shows up in the same spot. It follows the path of the nerve instead of staying local. It is often worse at night for no clear reason. Things that should not hurt at all can set it off — a bedsheet on the feet, a waistband.
Anti-inflammatories do very little for it. That is why people with nerve pain so often say that “nothing helps.” It needs treatment aimed at the nerve: selective nerve root blocks, electroanalgesia, hydrodissection where a nerve is tethered, or spinal cord stimulation in long-standing cases.
And a third possibility. Pain that lasts long enough can start to feed itself. The nervous system turns up the volume far beyond anything still wrong in the tissue. Treating the first part does not work at that point, because the problem has moved upstream. That needs a different plan, sometimes including ketamine.
Most long-term pain is a mix. Sorting out how much of each is the point of the first visit.
I-55/70 west to I-270 west, then south toward Lambert Airport, brings you to 4477 Woodson. Our Natural Bridge Road office at 12174 Natural Bridge Rd is a bit closer. Plan on about thirty-five minutes outside rush hour.
A diagnostic block settles it. We place a small amount of local anesthetic (numbing medicine) at one suspect part, using imaging to guide the needle. If numbing it takes the pain away every time, that part is the source. Then a longer-lasting treatment aimed at it makes sense. If not, we have ruled something out. And we have not locked you into a procedure that was never going to work.
Sciatica, neck and low back pain, diabetic neuropathy, vertebral compression fractures, headache, and pain that lasted after surgery.
Bring your imaging on disc or through a patient portal, not just the report. Bring a current list of your medicines with doses. Bring a short list of what you have already tried and what each one did.
Plan on about an hour for a first visit. It is a talk and an exam. You should leave knowing what we think is causing the pain, what would prove it, and what results are realistic. You will not be asked to sign up for a long course of anything on day one. Our injections use no sedation, so most patients drive themselves home.
Burning pain that is worse at night points to a nerve, not a joint. That is even more likely with numbness or tingling. Check it as nerve pain. Do not treat it as a strain.
Often, and that is why treatment sometimes has to target both. A disc can press on a nerve and irritate a joint at the same time.
Types of Pain: How Pain Is Classified, and Why the Category Changes the Treatment goes through mixed pain in detail.
Electrodiagnostic testing (nerve testing) can show which nerves are hurt and how badly. See electrodiagnostics.
Not always. Nerves can heal. What surrounds them — blood flow, inflammation, blood sugar control — has a big say in whether they do. Check it. Do not assume.
It should give you a diagnosis, not another prescription. The first visit is a talk and an exam. You should leave knowing what we think is causing the pain, what would prove it, and what results are realistic. When a diagnostic block proves the source, a longer-lasting treatment aimed at that part makes sense.
Neuropathic pain (nerve pain) comes from the nerve itself, not from a joint or tendon under load. Anti-inflammatories do very little for it. That is why people with burning, electric, or shooting pain so often say nothing helps. It needs treatment aimed at the nerve. That means selective nerve root blocks, electroanalgesia, hydrodissection where a nerve is tethered, or spinal cord stimulation in long-standing cases.
Plan on about an hour. It is a talk and an exam. You will not be asked to sign up for a long course of anything on day one. Bring imaging, a medicine list with doses, and a short list of what you have tried. Our injections use no sedation, so most patients drive themselves home.
Call us or request an appointment. See also pain management for Illinois patients.
Prefer not to fill in a form?
Same-day and emergency appointments are available.