What is a Therapeutic Blockade?
* Therapeutic blockade - this is a modern method used in the treatment of chronic pain and other clinical manifestations of disease, based on the direct administration of medicine to the part of the body where the pathological process which is responsible for the pain and other symptoms is located. In comparison to other methods (pharmacotherapy, physiotherapy, surgical and others), therapeutic blockades have been in use for a relatively short period of time - approximately 110 years and it significantly differs from other methods used for treating chronic pain.
* The pharmacotherapy implies that the medicines first get into the general blood flow where they are actually not needed and then, only later, get to the affected part in small quantities. The blockade helps the medicinal substances to reach the affected part (where they are most needed) directly and only later, in smaller quantities, get into the general blood flow.
Electric neurostimulation and other physical methods are based on stimulation of the high velocity nerve fibers and through that indirectly inhibits chronic pain impulses which are carried by low velocity fibers. In the blockade method, the anaesthetic directly reduces impulse transmission through low velocity fibers.
* In neurosurgical procedures nerve pathways are alcoholized and cut at various levels to disrupt transmission of pathological nerve impulses. These methods are resorted to only when other all other methods of treatment have failed. The interruption of nerve pathways leads to long-lasting and constant interruption of not only pain, but also normal impulses and this results in a number of side effects and complications. In a therapeutic blockade the anesthetic interrupts pain and other pathological impulses only temporarily thus maintaining normal nervous impulsation. However, temporary multiple blockades of pain impulsation can be used to achieve a prolonged and pronounced therapeutic effect.
* Apart from these advantages that therapeutic blockades enjoy over other methods of treatment, they have a number of other therapeutic effects not found in other methods. They relieve local pathological muscular and vascular spasm for a long period of time. They restore the normal trophicity of local tissues which had undergone destruction. By interrupting pain impulsation originating from the pathological center, the therapeutic blockades bring about the normalization of reflexive interrelation at all levels of the central nervous system.
*Thus, therapeutic blockades can be justly termed as a pathogenetic method in the treatment of the clinical manifestations found in neuroorthopedic diseases. Our 25 year experience in the use of therapeutic blockades and also the intensive research work that has been carried out in the USA and Western Europe have proved that medical blockades are one of the most effective means of treating the clinical manifestations of neuroorthopaedic diseases, especially the pain syndrome associated with them. The use of pathogenetic intraosseous blockades, which are given priority over other methods in Russia but are not used abroad, have been shown to considerably increase the efficiency of complex therapy in these diseases.
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