Comprehensive Spine Center

The New England Musculoskeletal Institute offers a full range of services for patients suffering from neck and back pain through our Comprehensive Spine Center. Here, experts provide today’s best non-surgical and surgical approaches, including injection therapies.

All services are available under one roof, in our modern building on the UConn Health Center’s Farmington campus. These include imaging, physical therapy and the region’s only warm-water SwimEx therapeutic pool, as well as an outpatient surgical center where all of the injection procedures, and many of the surgical cases, are performed.

Non-surgical Care: Physiatry

New technologies are expanding non-surgical treatment options for millions of American men and women who suffer from neck and back pain.

Treating Pain

For patients with acute, non-traumatic back or neck pain, the first step in treatment is always a thorough, physical examination to determine the correct diagnosis. First line treatment options include:

• Lifestyle modifications, such as losing excess weight
• Improved body mechanics
• Stress management

Medications, ranging from non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs to stronger, narcotic pain relievers, are also used, as well as physical therapy, aquatic therapy, hot and cold physical modalities and more.

State-of-the-art Interventions

If initial measures fail to secure significant relief from pain and/or significant progress toward the patient’s functional goals, more aggressive, spine interventions should be considered. Given the health risks associated with long-term use of any medication, particularly NSAIDS or narcotics, these procedures are worthy of consideration.

At the New England Musculoskeletal Institute and the Comprehensive Spine Center, the following injection therapies are used together with electro diagnostic studies both as diagnostic tools and to directly administer medications to the source of pain.

• Selective nerve root blocks provide relief for leg and arm pain due to pinched or irritable nerve root caused by disc protrusion or canal narrowing.
• Facet joint injections relieve low back pain.
• Sacroiliac injections address low back pain caused by dysfunction of these joints.
• Transforaminal steroid injections alleviate neck and low back pain arising from degenerative discs.
• Lumber Discogram to determine the level of disc pain.

These minimally invasive procedures are performed under X-ray guidance using today’s best imaging tools and intravenous contrast materials to precisely identify the source of pain and administer medications to the exact site.

Several multi-center studies, including the Spine Patients Outcome Research Trial (SPORT), have shown that these procedures provide significant relief from pain. The studies have also established evidence-based practice guidelines.

Surgical Approaches: Neurosurgery

Neurosurgeons with the New England Musculoskeletal Institute’s Comprehensive Spine Center provide comprehensive care for brain tumors, spinal injuries, epilepsy and other neurovascular and cerebrovascular diseases.

Through a combination of highly trained specialists and new technical resources, like sterotactic radiosurgery, which is the use of focused radiation to the brain, we deliver state-of-the-art treatment for a wide variety of diseases.

Patients are seen daily from Tuesday through Friday for consultation.

Areas of Expertise

Our neurosurgeons provide comprehensive care for a broad range of neurosurgical problems and disorders. As medical school faculty, they have extensive training and have developed expertise in the following areas:

• Complex spine surgery
• Epilepsy surgery
• Skull base surgery
• Conformal sterotactic radiosurgery
• Brain tumors
• Aneurysms