Your Spine Treatment Plan

Our physiatrists and your treatment team take the time to evaluate your condition and listen to your concerns and goals. Even if you tried similar treatments elsewhere, we consult with you to find a treatment protocol that helps you achieve your goals.

We offer a broad scope of treatments for a wide range of spine conditions. Common therapies include:

• Lifestyle changes (exercise, nutrition)
• Medicines (limited, thoughtful use for select patients)
• Pain relief procedures
• Physical therapy
• Rehabilitation therapy
• Rest

At New England Baptist Hospital, we believe that information empowers people. When you meet with your care team, we educate you and your family about the natural history, prognosis and treatment options available for your condition. You receive extensive information and practical advice about managing your symptoms and your path to recovery.

When you are equipped with knowledge about your condition and your care, you can make better decisions about your path forward.

Patients tell us that being presented with science-based information helps:

• Address concerns about their spine.
• Free them from the constraints spine problems put on their daily lives.

Medical Education

When you get care at the New England Baptist Hospital Spine Center, you may meet resident physicians or fellows. We are a major teaching site for physicians in-training, thanks to our advanced expertise in musculoskeletal diseases.

The Spine Center is part of Harvard Medical School’s Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation Residency program. We also employ full-time spine fellows and help train visiting fellows from a Harvard program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Children’s Hospital Boston.

Fellows are fully trained physicians completing an additional year of focused training in spine medicine.

As a patient, we hope you enjoy your encounters with these enthusiastic young physicians. Please know that you receive full attention from our experienced spine experts as well.

We use an internationally recognized rehabilitation approach to treat spinal pain.

Our intensive Spine Boot Camp provides safe and effective ways to treat and manage back and neck pain.

We created this boot camp-like therapy from years of research. Findings show that:

• Taking it easy and avoiding activity is the worst thing people with chronic back pain can do.
• Patients who complete spine rehab therapy report better physical ability and less pain.
• Most who complete the program can return to regular activities, including sports.

Our program:

• Includes two, one-hour sessions a week.
• Is led by a trained network of high-quality providers.
• Runs for four to eight weeks.
• Teaches you safe and beneficial exercises that restore spine motion and strength.

You can attend the Spine Boot Camp at one of several locations closest to your home.

Continuing Motion Spine Program

We offer the Continuing Motion Spine Program to help you continue your rehab and exercise program.

You qualify for this program after you complete the Spine Boot Camp. Our physical therapy team creates an exercise plan for you that includes:

• Equipment- and non-equipment-based programs.
• Hour-long workout sessions one to three times a week.
• Supervised by a certified athletic trainer.

At the New England Baptist Hospital Spine Center, we use advanced imaging technology to diagnose spine conditions as well as plan, monitor and perform pain management injections and procedures.

Your physiatrist completes an evaluation of your condition and symptoms to determine if spinal injections are the right way to manage your pain. We’ll educate you about these procedures in advance.

Experts including physiatrists, interventional neuroradiologists or pain anesthesiologists perform these procedures at New England Baptist Hospital using image (fluoroscopic) guidance to inject local anesthetics and corticosteroids.

Options include:

• Epidural and nerve root blocks. These procedures inject steroid and anesthetic medicine into the space next to the covering of the spinal cord and spinal nerves. These injections help relieve leg (lumbar radiculopathy or sciatica), or arm (cervical radiculopathy) pain caused by disk herniation or spinal stenosis that is pinching a nerve.
• Lumbar/cervical facet joint blocks. This type of injection places steroid and anesthetic medicine into the outer capsule of the facet joint. Facet joints sit on the back of the spine. They help control the position and movements of the vertebrae. As people age, facet joints become arthritic and can become painful. Facet joint blocks reduce pain and are especially useful in older patients.

Other injections include these types:

• Diagnostic medial branch blocks
• Intra-articular facet blocks
• Sacroiliac joint injections

Your care team provides the care you need. Here are other ways we manage back, neck and spine pain:

• Chiropractic care
• Laser therapy
• Massage
• Radiofrequency denervation (RFD)
• Spinal decompression therapy

At the New England Baptist Hospital Spine Center, your spine care team includes a comprehensive group of experts who work together to address every aspect of your condition. You get access to a larger pool of expertise and knowledge from these and other specialists:

• Interventional and neurological radiologists
• Neurosurgeons
• Neurologists and neurosurgeons
• Non-operative spine doctors
• Orthopedic spine surgeons
• Physiatrists
• Rehabilitation therapists
• Spine care nurse practitioner 

Our entire spine care team takes part in innovative research to pioneer new treatments and diagnostic technologies.

When appropriate, your care team connects you to the latest, evidence-backed research and clinical trials.

Find the right spine care provider for you.

If surgery is the best treatment option for your spine condition, you can take comfort knowing New England Baptist Hospital performs more back, neck and spine procedures than any other hospital in Massachusetts.

Your care team carefully plans for an accurate and precise procedure that relieves your pain, restores function and gives you the best possible long-term outcome.

We offer a full range of orthopedic and neurosurgical procedures:

• Corrective surgery (deformities)
• Image-guided surgery
• Minimally invasive surgery
• Revision surgery
• Robotic surgery