Patients very commonly come to me as a first time patient, worried that I’m gonna recommend surgery on the first visit. And that’s a very rare circumstance where there really are no other options. The vast majority of my patients, we start with routine medications, physical therapy, and take a slow progression towards more and more aggressive approaches if they need it.
The next step after therapy is typically injections. And then after they’ve tried everything else, if they’re not getting better and the pain’s bad enough and they have a good surgical option, then we go over their surgical options.