April is national Occupational Therapy month so we are celebrating this important profession by highlighting our very own Kristin Biggins, OTD, OTR/L, CHT. Kristin joined Missoula Bone & Joint in 2020, bringing years of experience as a Certified Hand Therapist, CHT to our therapy team. She received her MS in Occupational Therapy in 1992 at…
Pain Management
The use of an injection into a joint for pain relief
Painful joints, such as your ankle, elbow, hip, knee, shoulder, spine and wrist, even the small joints in your hands and feet may benefit from an injection into a joint. People with osteoarthritis in a joint that is causing them pain may be looking for a solution so they can get back to the activities…
Sympathetic Nerve Blocks as a Treatment for Pain
What is a Sympathetic Nerve Block? A Sympathetic Nerve Block is an injection to your neck or back to help manage chronic pain. Your sympathetic nerves run along both sides of your spine from the upper neck to the coccyx (tail bone). They are responsible for conducting sensation signals to the spinal cord from the…
Occipital Nerve Blocks
What are Occipital Nerve Blocks? An occipital nerve block is one of the most common procedures to provide pain relief for migraines and chronic headaches. This procedure involves injecting pain-relieving medication (local anesthetic) and steroids into your greater and lesser occipital nerves. Your greater occipital nerve is responsible for most of the feeling in the…
Epidural Steroid Injections as a Pain Management Option
What is a Pain Management Doctor? Dr. Justin Kruer is a pain management doctor with special medical training in the evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment of all different types of pain. Pain is a wide spectrum of disorders including acute pain, and chronic pain, and sometimes a combination of these. Pain management helps a patient alleviate…
National Physical Therapy Month #ChoosePT
October is National Physical Therapy (PT) month, so we wanted to showcase some aspects of Physical Therapy that may be less known to most. 1. Did you know that DPT stands for Doctor of Physical Therapy? That’s right, the DPT behind your therapist’s name means that they have a clinical doctorate in Physical Therapy, and…
How can Pain Injections and Radiofrequency ablations help eliminate pain?
How can Pain Injections and Radiofrequency ablations help eliminate pain? Injections are a tool that Dr. Justin Kruer uses to help diagnose a painful condition (diagnostic injections) and then to help treat a painful condition (therapeutic injections). The evaluation process starts with a careful history: what causes your pain, where is the pain, how often…
Pain Management for acute and chronic pain
What is Pain Management? People may think that pain management basically means that a provider gives a patient opioids and pain medication, and that is simply not true. In Pain Management we like to use all kinds of modalities to control pain. Such as injection therapy (epidurals), radio frequency, physical therapy, dry needling, all used…