Video Transcription

Prolotherapy injections for low back pain

Here you can see an illustration of the actual procedure of Prolotherapy to the low back.

Typically the lateral aspect of the sacroiliac joint is treated. Sacroiliac problems are the most common conditions treated by a Prolotherapy physician as it relates to low back pain. Sacroiliac problems can also refer pain down the leg, so the most common reason we see for “sciatica” is actually sacroiliac injuries.

We will also treat degenerative disc disease. That responds very, very well to Prolotherapy. But right now I am just doing the right lateral sacroiliac areas. Muscles that attach here include the piriformis muscle as well as the gluteus maximus muscle. Again, just thoroughly covering the sacroiliac joint, both the medial and lateral. Anyone who has clicking in the lower back typically has injury of either the lumbosacral ligaments or the sacroiliac ligaments. Anyone who needs a lot of chiropractic care in the lower back typically has injury to these ligaments also. And the best method to cure the pain of these conditions, I believe, is Prolotherapy. As you can see Prolotherapy injections go very, very quickly so there is very little flinching by the client so even though there is a lot of injections the procedure is typically very well tolerated here.

Now I am doing the various transverse processes of the lumbar spine. We typically do L3, L4, L5 transverse processes. All of the Prolotherapy injections are done where the ligaments attach to the bone, or the muscles or tendons attach to the bone. I did the transverse processes so now I am doing the medial sacroiliac ligaments. The sacroiliac ligaments attaches to the iliolumbar ligament. The iliolumbar ligaments attach to the L4 L5 vertebral bodies so you need to treat those areas also.

You can see that the Prolotherapy treatment goes very quickly, it’s very well tolerated. Prolotherapy is a very safe procedure but you can see that I am jiggling the needle. The reason for that is if I was to tickle a nerve it wouldn’t injure the nerve. You can see that even though the procedure is done very quickly that the jiggling of the needle is done in case a nerve was tickled and I am not going to injure the nerve. I am now doing the transverse processes and the facet joints of L3, L4, L5. They can be done very quickly and they can be done in the office and you don’t need X-ray equipment and that helps keep the cost down. Here is the last syringe so you can see that the whole procedure took about 3 ½ minutes. And most chronic low back pain patients will respond to this type of Prolotherapy.

Normally you just need 3 to 6 visits. There you go. We are completely done.