A 61-year old nurse with multiple comorbidities, Regina Matera has a lot of experience working with pain management specialists during the past twelve years. She lives with chronic pain due to arthritis in her lower back and shoulders. She also suffers from pain in her feet and from two knee replacements.
Fortunately, she found Dr. David Rosenblum, Director of Pain Management at Maimonides Medical Center, to help minimize her discomfort ten years ago. Prior to seeing Dr. Rosenblum, Regina relied heavily on opiates. As she responds well to ultrasound-guided interventions, her drug use has declined and her quality life has improved.
Dr. Rosenblum is one of the few doctors that is trained and skilled to use ultrasound,” says Regina. “Most of the other doctors, when they give you the injection, they’re really going blind…. They’re looking at your MRI and then trying to blindly go and find that exact location. When Dr. Rosenblum is giving you the injection, he is basically using live ultrasound and visualizing the nerve and then getting that exact location that he wants.”
Dr. Rosenblum first treated Regina with PRP for chronic neck, low back pain and headaches. She returned to him with foot pain due to planter fasciitis when orthotics and blind steroid shots from podiatrists failed.
When I received a steroid injection from other doctors, sometimes it didn’t help me,” she continues. “Whereas with Dr. Rosenblum, you feel it, because you know he’s on the nerve or right next to it. He is in the exact location. He’ll ask you as he’s giving you the injection, ‘am I in the right place?’ And he knows he’s exactly where he is and he’ll even teach it to you. He’ll show you as he’s going along ‘here’s your nerve,’ and he’ll go through the entire thing.”
Dr. Rosenblum uses the Clarius L7 HD high frequency handheld ultrasound scanner for his practice, which he says works well for all of his ultrasound-guided pain management procedures, shallow and deep. He has been a Clarius user since 2017.
Interested in learning about ultrasound-guided pain management from Dr. Rosenblum? You can learn his techniques by watching his client cases on plantar fasciitis and hip pain here. Or you can watch his recent webinar, « Practical Pandemic Pain Remedy: Ultrasound-Guided Occipital, Erector Spinae & Tendon Sheath Injections. »