Pain Management in Roswell, GA

Summit Spine & Joint Centers’ Roswell office sits on Hembree Road, serving patients across North Fulton, including Alpharetta, Sandy Springs and Milton. Most patients here are 40 and older, dealing with back, neck or joint pain that hasn’t improved with rest or over-the-counter treatment.

The Roswell team pairs two Emory-trained physiatrists, Dr. Gabriel Marrero and Dr. Tania Barroso, with Dr. Oluwasegun Lijofi, fellowship-trained in interventional pain medicine, Dr. Chike Madu, fellowship-trained in pain medicine at the University of South Florida, and nurse practitioner Deborah Wilkens, a former cardiac RN. That range of backgrounds means a new patient’s case can be matched to whichever specialist’s training fits it best, rather than funneled through a single approach.

Roswell is also one of a small number of Summit Spine offices with its own in-house Surgery Center, so a patient who needs a procedure like kyphoplasty or spinal cord stimulation can have it performed on-site rather than referred to an outside surgical facility.

A first visit usually starts with a review of prior imaging and treatment history and a physical exam, followed by a plan that starts with the least invasive option that fits the diagnosis.

Conditions

Patients at the Roswell office come in with a range of neck, back and joint pain, including:

• Back Pain: pain that hasn’t improved with rest, medication or physical therapy.
• Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS): nerve pain that lingers well past the injury that started it.
• Degenerative Disc Disease: the natural thinning of spinal discs that builds up with age.
• Facet Joint Pain: irritation in the small joints that let the spine bend and twist.
• Fibromyalgia: widespread, hard to pin down pain paired with heightened sensitivity.
• Herniated Disc: disc material pressing on a nearby spinal nerve, often confirmed by MRI.
• Lumbar Radiculopathy (Sciatica): pinched-nerve pain that travels from the lower back down one leg.
• Post-Laminectomy Syndrome (Failed Back Syndrome): pain that continues after an earlier spine surgery.
• Spinal Stenosis: narrowing of the spinal canal that puts pressure on the nerves inside it.

Treatments

The Roswell office offers all 19 standard non-surgical treatments below, plus two procedures available through its in-house Surgery Center:

• Back Pain Treatment: a plan built from the options below, matched to the diagnosis.
• Celiac Plexus Block: a nerve block for chronic pain in the stomach, pancreas or other abdominal organs.
• Cervical Epidural Steroid Injection: the same steroid approach used for neck and arm pain.
• Cervical Facet Radiofrequency Neurotomy: the same heat-based technique applied to neck joints.
• Discography: an imaging test that pinpoints which disc is causing the pain.
• Facet Joint Injections: reduce swelling in the spine’s small connecting joints.
• Genicular Radiofrequency Ablation: targets the nerves behind chronic knee pain.
• Intrathecal Pump Implant: delivers low-dose pain medication directly to the spine.
• Lumbar Epidural Steroid Injection: a steroid injection that calms an inflamed lower-back nerve.
• Lumbar Radiofrequency Neurotomy: an RFA variation for the lower back, built to last months longer than a standard injection.
• Lumbar Sympathetic Block: an injection series that eases CRPS-related leg pain.
• Lumbar Transforaminal Epidural Steroid Injection: steroid guided precisely to one affected nerve root.
• Medial Branch Block: pinpoints which facet joint is behind the pain before treating it.
• MILD: a minimally invasive outpatient option for spinal stenosis that doesn’t require an implant.
• Radiofrequency Ablation (RFA): uses heat to interrupt a nerve’s pain signal.
• Rhizotomy: uses controlled heat to quiet a painful joint’s nerve supply.
• Sacroiliac Joint Steroid Injection: treats pain at the joint connecting the spine and pelvis.
• Stellate Ganglion Block: treats nerve pain in the head, neck or arms.
• Vertiflex Superion: a small implant that holds a narrowed spinal canal open.
• Kyphoplasty (in-house Surgery Center): rebuilds a fractured vertebra’s height and stability.
• Spinal Cord Stimulation (in-house Surgery Center): an implanted device that blocks chronic pain signals.

The last two are performed on-site, without a referral to an outside surgical facility.

Providers

Five providers see patients at the Roswell office:

• Dr. Gabriel Marrero: board certified in internal medicine, physical medicine and rehabilitation, and interventional pain medicine, fellowship-trained at Emory, where he later served as an associate professor training PM&R residents.
• Dr. Tania Barroso: trained in physical medicine and rehabilitation at Emory School of Medicine, where she also served as an Assistant Professor mentoring PM&R residents.
• Dr. Oluwasegun Lijofi: board certified in family medicine and fellowship-trained in interventional pain medicine at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.
• Dr. Chike Madu: board certified in interventional pain management, trained in physical medicine and rehabilitation at the University of Miami and in pain medicine at the University of South Florida, after earning his medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
• Deborah Wilkens, FNP: a family nurse practitioner who spent seven years as a cardiac RN at Emory Saint Joseph’s Hospital before earning her MSN from Georgia State University.

Full bios are linked above.