How Sympathetic Nerve Blocks Work
Feb 23, 2026
Around 23% of the adult population in the United States reports chronic pain, and 8.5% struggle with high-impact pain that prevents them from functioning normally.
To combat these numbers, Arora Pain Clinic in Torrance, California, offers a wide range of treatment options designed to bring much-needed relief. Board-certified pain management specialist Ripu Arora, MD, MBA's goal is the same as yours — stop the pain — and there are a number of ways to go about this, depending upon your unique situation.
In the following, we explore the role that sympathetic nerve blocks can play in managing pain and whether they may be helpful in your struggle to regain your quality of life.
Your nervous system is complex, to say the least, and is made up of three types of nerves:
Your sympathetic nervous system is part of your autonomic system, which is your involuntary nervous system (think of functions like digestion, breathing, heart rate, and sweating).
More specifically, your sympathetic nervous system is responsible for your fight-or-flight mechanism — that involuntary response in your body when you’re faced with danger. This system can also play a role in pain signaling.
When Dr. Arora delivers a sympathetic nerve block, which is an injection that contains an anesthetic and a steroid, the goal is to block the sympathetic nerve cluster, or ganglion, that we believe plays a role in your pain signaling.
Sympathetic nerve blocks can accomplish two objectives: diagnostic and therapeutic. With the first, we can use a sympathetic nerve block to try and identify the nerves that are responsible for your pain. In a therapeutic mode, these blocks are successful in relieving your pain.
We typically turn to sympathetic nerve blocks to address:
In all of these cases, we deliver the sympathetic nerve block into the ganglion along your spine that we feel is associated with your pain. In other words, we may target the stellate ganglion in your neck or a network of nerves in your lower back to relieve lower-limb pain.
Dr. Arora performs sympathetic nerve blocks on-site in our office. To get started, he uses a topical agent to numb the injection site. Once you’re comfortable, Dr. Arora uses fluoroscopy (X-ray) to guide the needle to ensure we target the right area.
Once finished, you’re free to return home. You may feel some soreness at the injection sites, but this discomfort is usually short-lived.
If you’d like to explore whether a sympathetic nerve block holds the key to relieving your pain, call our office at 310-5303595 or schedule your appointment online today.