CT Guided Costovertebral Nerve Ablations

Shebo · #1 (**permalink**) 03-28-2011, 12:29 AM

Mark, our pain sounds so similar. The pain level (thoracic) that you describe and what makes it increase is the same.

Quote:

On most days, I experience pain levels of 7 or 8, but I also spend more time at 2 than at 7 and above. If I can not do anything, I'll avoid high pain levels but it's impossible for me to live like that. If I try to push through, I'll get to a 9 pretty quickly.

I recently gave the exact above story to my pain management dr. when she said that I needed to push through my pain during the day and to add exercise. I explained to her that when I push through the pain then I can't control it.

Against her advice, I have changed the way that I use my day. I do tasks in very short amounts of time. It seems to have helped. It is very frustrating, as you know. You get going and want to keep going. I now know that it will send me into uncontrolable pain.

I just had a myelogram done and we have been talking about doing an ablation. I read all of your posts here and I couldn't find the answer. Can you tell me what pain relief (if any) are you having now from your ablation? Is it the same as above? Would you do it again?

Thanks.

mmglobal · #2 (**permalink**) 03-28-2011, 05:36 AM

Shebo, the relief I got from the ablation was minor. I have slightly less pain, so I function slightly higher with less meds. Unfortunately, the problem that easily sends me to a 9 was not addressed by the ablations. We identified pain generators and dealt with them, but they were NOT the true culprits.

I'm sure you saw my next thread about getting a discogram done at the seemingly bad level... it was negative. We are still scratching our heads.

Good luck... keep us posted,

Mark

Shebo · #3 (**permalink**) 03-28-2011, 12:48 PM

Thank you for the reply. I hope I wasn't too nosy with my questions. How disappointing to go through all of that and still no answers. I don't know how you are able to do all that you do.

At your suggestion, I am sending my new test results to Dr. Jho in Pittsburgh. However, I can't find anyone who has any experiences with him. Do you know of any?

This is a very frustrating process.

I wish you the best.

mmglobal · #4 (**permalink**) 03-28-2011, 04:52 PM

Through the years I've met many patients of Dr. Jho. Some very successful, some very unhappy. What he does is well outside the box and that makes him an easy target for lawsuits. The fact that he has to defend himself a lot does not give me concern because I've seen other pioneers who face the same issues.

Unfortunately, his office is quite difficult to deal with. I would recommend pushing through the difficulties to find out what he has to say. I look past the anecdotal evidence as it has very limited value.

mmglobal · #5 (**permalink**) 04-07-2011, 10:58 PM

As mentioned above... this story continues on my discography thread... here it is:

My Thoracic Discography - NEGATIVE

mmglobal · #6 (**permalink**) 04-25-2011, 03:29 AM

This story took a detour... see My Thoracic Discography - NEGATIVE

Reposting return to costovertebral joints here. Also, will update ESI's and accupuncture here.

Based on Dr. Baumbach's recommendation, I had 3-Tesla MRI of cervical and thoracic spine last Thursday. I did an extensive review with Dr. Reul... no new data, nothing interesting. No new pathology seen in c-spine.

I told him how disappointed I was with the negative costovetebral ablations, especially after such conclusive results of the diagnostics.

He said that he was being especially careful with me, using low amounts of energy in the ablation to avoid permanent wrap around numbness that is not uncommon with this ablation. See the thread linked below for more discussion.

He recommended repeating the investigation to determine painful levels. If data is reproducible, he suggests redoing the ablation, but a little more aggressively. I think that is a fine plan and will proceed with that... next time I can get back to Bonn.

Mark

jsewell · #7 (**permalink**) 04-25-2011, 03:59 AM

Mark,
It is amazing how much testing we can go through and procedures. WHat investigation are you having repeated? Discography repeat?
judy

mmglobal · #8 (**permalink**) 04-25-2011, 06:04 AM

Judy, we'll be repeating the costovertebral joint injections. In the last round, there were 2 joints of 5 injected that were clearly positive with concordant pain on injection and relief following injection. 3 surrounding joints negative.

Based on the resuts, we ablated the 2 positive joints. We'll redo the injections and the ablations if indicated. However, I'm not sure when I can get back to Bonn.