CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – At Advanced Pain Management of Virginia, Dr. Scott Wagner has made a name for himself by finding ways to eliminate his patients’ pain while putting them on a management plan to keep them happy and healthy moving forward. It has been his specially for26 years now, and he’s continuing to use it to help a countless number of patients here in Charlottesville.

But where does Dr. Wagner begin with his patients? The path to reliving pain often begins with a simple conversation and ends with Dr. Wagner and his team not just relieving symptoms but eliminating their underlying cause.

Correctly diagnosing the problem

To explain his method, Dr. Wagner gave an example of a common patient who he sees over a hundred times a year. These patients often come in complaining about weakness in their lower extremities. Dr. Wagner says the diagnosis is often peripheral neuropathy, a common cause of nerve damage, but the problem goes beyond that. Dr. Wagner said peripheral neuropathy patients are enflamed before symptoms appear. But Doctors typically just relieve the symptoms but not the underlying cause and other contributing factors.

That’s where Dr. Wagner comes in. With his experience, he knows exactly what to test, and thanks to Advanced Pain Management of Virginia’s great screening system, Dr. Wagner and his team can find the exact cause and where the symptoms are originating from.

Identifying every problem

Dr. Wagner said lot of his patients go to clinics that are able to identify one potential cause, but some issues often aren’t so simple. There could be four or five other underlying factors contributing to symptoms.

“If they don’t treat all those things, or can’t treat all those things, the patient can only get so much better or not better,” Dr. Wagner said.

That’s why Advanced Pain Management of Virginia tackles every factor that could be worsening a patient’s pain to ensure that symptoms don’t return. It’s a crucial part of what makes Dr. Wagner’s methods different.

Returning to a fulfilling live

Dr. Wagner said he learned many of his methods from his time in sports medicine, a world where teams are looking to avoid surgeries and athletes are always eager to return to play, just as dominant as they were before. Dr. Wagner applies those same principles to all of his patients, helping them defy stigmas about aging while allowing them to live a full life.

A big part of that method is putting his patients on a management plan that ensures their symptoms do not return. Just like an athlete returning to the field with the same high level of play they had before, Dr. Wagner said his best patients continue to live their lives to the fullest.

“They’re not defined by their age. They’re defined by the quality of their life,” he said.