Medical Services (Accordion Page)

Accurate Clinic provides urgent care with no appointment required. Our physician, Eric Ehlenberger MD, is board certified in emergency medicine with more than twenty years experience working in local academic emergency departments including Charity Hospital New Orleans, Tulane Medical Center, and Ochsner West Bank.

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We provide walk-in service for patients with episodic illness including flu, sinusitis, viral illness, bronchitis, gastroenteritis, urinary infections and minor injuries. We can provide physicals for school and work but we do not do CDL physicals. We also provide TB skin testing.

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Accurate Clinic offers a wide range of primary care services, walk-in and by appointment:

Wellness

Headaches

High blood pressure

Cholesterol

Thyroid

Anxiety and Stress management

Depression

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While we do provide laboratory services for blood and urine testing, we do not have an on-site lab that can provide immediate results. We can generally arrange same-day x-ray services at local imaging centers, but we do not have on-site x-ray services.

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If your condition suggests the need for such immediate ancillary services, such as a complaint of chest pain, shortness of breath or symptoms of an acute stroke, please seek care at a local emergency room where you are more likely to get the appropriate emergency care that our clinic does not provide.

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Anti-Aging Medicine

Anti-Aging Medicine is a new field of medicine that focuses on slowing and/or reversing the aging process to improve quality of life. It includes lifestyle modification, the use of nutritional supplements and dermatologic treatments. Recent research indicates the potential benefit of certain supplements that may slow and/or reverse certain cell attributes related to the aging process. Treatment with these supplements may provide protection against oxidative stress, the condition thought to be the basis of many of the degenerative disorders associated with aging such as diabetes, metabolic syndrome, hypertension, obesity and cancer.

Aesthetic Medicine

Aesthetic Medicine is a medical specialty focused on providing an artistic and aesthetic amplification of human beauty. With minimally invasive procedures and a variety of topical medications, the practice of aesthetic medicine seeks to provide patients with treatments designed to improve their appearance as well as provide anti-aging therapies.

NLAL

Accurate Clinic offers the latest technologic advance in body sculpting with NLAL. Our NLAL belt? incorporates near-laser infrared wavelength light that painlessly triggers a physiologic release of fat from targeted fat cells in the body. From 300 up to 1200 calories of fat are released into the tissues in the 24 hours post-treatment allowing for someone on a calorie restricted diet to quickly and safely target the loss of inches in just a few twenty minute sessions with the NLAL. It is a painless, well-tolerated procedure that really works. Numerous scientific studies have confirmed both the safety and effectiveness of NLAL treatment and reference publications are available to those interested in reading them.

Skin and Facial Treatments

Additional aesthetic treatment options provided at Accurate Clinic include botox, dermal fillers, hair removal, age spot removal, spider vein removal and skin rejuvenation. The procedures are brief and require no recovery or down-time so that our clients can resume their day with minimal interruption.

We are currently offering special pricing on Botox injections at $10/unit.

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Licensed Physical Therapist

Our licensed physical therapist, Sue Drecktrah, has extensive experience in helping people with both acute injuries and chronic pain recover and improve function.

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Management of Post-traumatic Pain (acute and chr9nic)

Physical therapy is availabe by appointment for people suffering acute pain related to recent trauma such as falls and motor vehicle accidents. For patients enrolled in our chronic opioid and non-opioid pain management programs, physical therapy is provided as part of our treatment plan at no extra charge. Our physical therapist will assess painful conditions to educate people in ways to reduce or resolve their pain and improve function and sleep. Our therapist will develop individualized home exercise programs that are tailored to each person’s specific needs as a means of maintaining function and fitness including improved strength, endurance, mobility and balance.

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Muscle Pain and Trigger Point Therapy

In addition to exercise-oriented management, our physical therapist provides soothing, relaxing soft tissue mobilization to reduce acute and chronic pain, muscle tightness and spasm. As a means of reducing chronic muscle pain, patients can be evaluated for the presence of myofascial pain and trigger points that are frequent causes of severe muscle pain. When trigger points are identified they can be treated by our physical therapist to provide effective and lasting pain relief. Trigger points are common sources of chronic neck and shoulder pain, headaches, mid- and low back pain and pain in the buttocks area. Trigger point pain can often be associated with referred pain patterns that are so severe that they are frequently mis-diagnosed as disc pain and sciatica leading to inappropriate and ineffective surgery and interventional pain injections.

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For those patients seeking disabiity, our physical therapist offers an extensive Functional Capacity Evaluation, a court-recognized, standardized assessment to accurately determine an individual’s level of disability.

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Licensed Personal Trainer

Our licensed personal trainer, Ritchie Sanducci,? has many years experience assisting people with exercise training to improve their strength, endurance and mobility. He has special expertise in muscle release techniques that can be quite helpful in reducing chronic muscle and joint pain.

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Personal training services are available by appointment for those interested in learning more effective techniques for exercise training. Personal training services are offered as part of our chronic opioid and non-opioid pain programs as well as our weight loss program. Since exercise has been shown to be a very effective adjunctive means of reducing anxiety and depression, we also strongly encourage our patients being managed for anxiety and depression to meet with Richie as well.

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Registered Dietitian

Our registered dietitian, Ritchie Sanducci, provides medical nutrition counseling to patients enrolled in all of our medical programs including the Weight Loss program, our Chronic Pain programs, Cardiovascular Wellness program, Male Wellness program and our Anxiety and Depression programs.

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At Accurate Clinic, our therapeutic team all consider the role of nutrition and diet to be a fundamental and critical component to the management of the conditions treated in our medical programs.

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Weight Loss

Obviously, the role of dietitian is central to any weight loss program. Our weight loss patients meet with our dietitian and are provided with individualized dietary plans based on their specific needs and interests.

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Diet, Nutrition and Chronic Pain

The role of diet and nutrition is often overlooked and under-appreciated as a significant contributor to chronic pain. At Accurate Clinic we strongly advise people to address their diet as part of their means of reducing chronic pain. While this is critically important for those chronic pain patients who are obese, the role of diet in inflammation and pain has been well established by current nutrition research. All of our pain patients are provided with appointments with our dietitian for nutritional education and guidance.

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Diet, Nutrition, Anxiety and Depression

Not unlike chronic pain, the role of diet and nutrition is often overlooked and under-appreciated as a significant contributor to mood disorders. Research has especially found very specific roles for diet as a significant contributor to depression. All of our anxiety and depression? patients are encourage to meet? with our dietitian for nutritional education and guidance.

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Diet, Nutrition, and Cardiovascular Wellness

Of course diet and weight are major factors in cardiovascular health. Our dietitian services are available to all of our patients enrolled in our Cardiovascular Wellness program to improve their cardiovascular health, hypertension and cholesterol.

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What is Meditation?

Meditation is a state of mind in which the person focuses their attention on one single thing. When the person’s mind, or attention, naturally wanders to another thought, the person brings their attention back to their original focus. This process, also referred to as “mindfulness” is both simple – anyone can do it – and difficult, because one’s mind always wanders.

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Forms of Meditation

?While the term “meditation” brings to mind someone sitting cross-legged on the floor and chanting, there are many ways to practice mindful exercise and achieve the healthful benefits associated with doing so. A very common meditation technique is to simpy sit quietly in a comfortable chair, close one’s eyes, and focus one’s attention solely on observing one’s breathing.? After a brief time of doing so, the mind inevitably wanders to other thoughts – this is natural. The challenge is to bring one’s attention back to the breathing. Spending twenty minutes a day in this practice provides surprising benefits. Mindful exercise can take the form of quiet prayer such as performing “Hail Marys” as practiced by Catholics, quietly listening intently to music, or focusing on a guided relaxation video. The choice of method is not important and the degree of success at focusing attention is not important. What matters is the concerted effort to maintain the mental state.

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Health Benefits of Meditation – Pain
Practicing meditation offers many health benefits. Studies show that it? improves ones sense of well-being, lessens the need for pain medications and reduces the frequency and severity of chronic headaches. Recent research also confirms that meditation helps reverse the process of central sensitization which accompanies many chronic pain syndromes including chronic low back pain, chronic neck pain, chronic headaches and fibromyalgia. Central sensitization is a process in which the presence of chronic pain induces changes in the nervous system and brain that contributes to developing hypersensitivity to pain, pressure, cold temperature and other sensations including light touch. It is recommended to spend time every day in some form of mindful exercise. A recent study showed that for those who did, there average pain scores dropped 1-2 points after a three month practice period.

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?Health Benefits of Meditation – Anxiety & Stress

The presence of anxiety is a stressful experience for everybody and for some it can become incapacitating. One of the most useful tools for combatting anxiety is the practice of meditation and other
mindful exercises. Not only does it calm the mind and reduce the stress of anxiety, it also results in improved sleep. Studies show that many of the hormonal and biochemical consequences of stress which contribute to such stress-related diseases as high blood pressure, heart disease, strokes and obesity are reduced as well.

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Just Practice

It is the process of practicing meditation that provides the benefits, so the first and foremost lesson in meditation is to not judge one’s success or failure at maintaining singularity of thought. One just practices and the benefits will follow.

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Anxiety and Depression

Our counselor, Amanda Walker, is fully trained in psychotherapy and offers the benefit of years of experience in assisting people in dealing with anxiety and depression. Individual as well as couples and family counseling are available.

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Coping Skills

For many with chronic pain and other chronic medical conditions, learning to cope and adapt to those conditions can be quite challenging. One of the most effective collections of techniques and methods for coping with chronic pain and stress is Cognitive Behavior Therapy or CBT. It is considered of foremost importance in the management of many conditions, including fibroymalgia, anxiety, PTSD and addiction. We offer CBT training as individual and affordable group sessions. Insurance reimbursement may be available as well depending on one’s policy.

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Addiction Recovery

Counseling to assist in the recovery process for those with substance abuse and addictive disorders is a neccesary component of our addiction recovery services. Our counseling treatment plans are individualized to meet the needs of our patients and may include individual or group formats.

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Quitting smoking is difficult for most people and at Accurate Clinic we offer multiple means of assisting those ready to quit. Medication management is the cornerstone for many, and prescription medications such as Chantix, Wellbutrin, Zyban and nicotine replacement are available. Studies indicate that the effectiveness of one prescription drug vs. another is about the same, although if an individual’s family member responds successfully with one medication, there is increased likelihood the individual will also respond well to that medication.

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But medication management alone for smoking cessation has been shown to be less succesful if it is not accompanied by counseling in techniques for quitting. One session with our counselor can provide you with knowledge derived from decades of assisting smokers with quitting.

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Synaptamine

As a result of recent breakthroughs in research on recovering from chemical and behavioral addictions, we offer Synaptamine, a supplement with good evidence that it raises dopamine levels in the brain that are chronically deficient with addictions. Supplementing with Synaptamine facilitates quitting by helping optimize brain health, enhancing energy, reducing stress as well as helping nutritional maintenance of improved mood and sense of well-being.

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This decade has seen an explosion in research on medical genetics. The knowledge gained by this research, while still in it’s infancy, has provided many insights into the medical management of chronic pain, addiction, obesity, psychiatric health and cardiovascular wellness to name a few.

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Medical Genetics and Drug Metabolism

At Accurate Cinic we have been providing medical genetic testing for our patients since before 2012 and Dr. Ehlenberger has published two articles in the field of chronic pain and genetics. Genetic testing is simple and painless and requires only a quick swab of saliva. One of the definitive benefits of genetic testing includes the evaluation of how each person individually metabolizes medications. This knowledge allow greater safety in predicting drug-drug interactions as well as the prediction of effectiveness of medication and potential for side effects.

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Medical Genetics and Chronic Pain

Over the last decade we have learned that genetic testing helps predicts a person’s sensitivity to pain and allows for insights into tailoring medication management of pain. Ongoing research at Accurate Clinic is investigating the genetic role of developing tolerance to opioid pain medications as well as the genetic impact of dosing requirements for individual opioid medications. As part of our coordinated care program with our patient’s managing physicians, we also share the results and implications of our genetic testing with our patients’ pharmacist and other clincians to enhance the safety of medication prescribing.

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Medical Genetics and Obesity

Our knowedge of genetics as it relates to obesity is also rapidly expanding. We are learning how genetic testing may help predict a person’s tendency towards obesity, their response to different foods and diets as well as the genetic role in eating behaviors, especially certain addictive-like eating disorders such as food cravings and binge eating. This knowledge helps us individually tailor our weight loss program in ways to improve the patient’s likelihood of successfully losing weight and maintaining their weight loss. Genetic testing also offers insights to the role of exercise in the individual which may allow for greater personalization of an exercise regimen to improve effectiveness.

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Medical Genetics, Psychiatry and Depression

We offer routine genetic testing to all of our patients with depression. This testing helps identify those individuals who are genetically impaired in their ability to manufacture and maintain serotonin and other neurotransmitters that play critical roles in maintaining a healthy mood. Knowledge of possible impairments allows for safe and effective means of adapting treatment to improve treatment outcomes, especially in depression. Furthermore, common genetic variants impact the metabolism, side effect profiles and effectiveness of many of the commonly prescribed psychiatric medications. This knowledge can have a very significant impact on improving the safety and effectiveness of managing psychiatric conditions.

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We offer lab services at Accurate Clinic that includes drawing blood and obtaining urine and saliva for testing. We have established relationships with the major lab testing facilities in the area so that we can obtain results for most all tests in a timely fashion. We provide urine and saliva testing options for illicit drugs including highly accurate and sensitive confirmation testing when on-site testing provides questionable results.

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Our on-site capacity for providing immediate results is very limited: for those patients with urgent conditions such as acute chest pain, shortness of breath, symptoms of stroke etc., we strongly advise these patients seek care at their closest emergency room.

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Yoga and Tai Chi are two eastern disciplines that have gained great popularity in this country due to their effectiveness in improving health of the mind and the body. At Accurate Clinic we believe that incorporating either or both of these disciplines into an individual’s lifestyle offers a number of health benefits. Our personal trainer, Ritchi Sanducci, is adept at teaching both yoga and tai chi.

Individual and group classes are available.

Yoga

The practice of yoga helps empower the individual towards better health and freedom from disease. There are many different disciplines in yoga and it is important that a person engage the one most appropriate for them. Certainly for those with chronic painful conditions, the idea of engagin
g extreme exercise positions is absurd. However, there are many positions, or asanas, that disciplines of yoga such as Hatha Yoga encorporate into daily practice that are tolerable even for those with chronic pain. The practice of Yoga can:

?- Increase flexibility
?- Reduce stress and inflammation
?- Reduce neck, back, arthritis and headache pain
?- Reduce reliance on medications
?- Increase strength of the core and extremities
?- Improve balance
?- Increase endurance
?- Facilitate weight loss
?- Improve concentration

Tai Chi

Originally developed for self-defense, tai chi has evolved into a graceful form of exercise that is now used for stress reduction and many other health conditions. Described as “meditation in motion,” tai chi promotes serenity through gentle, flowing movements.

Tai chi is low impact and puts minimal stress on muscles and joints, making it generally safe for all ages, even those with chronic pain syndromes.

When learned correctly and performed regularly, tai chi can be a positive part of an overall approach to improving your health. The benefits of tai chi may include:

?- Decreased stress, anxiety and depression
?- Improved mood
?- Improved aerobic capacity
?- Increased energy and stamina
?- Improved flexibility, balance and agility
?- Improved muscle strength and definition

Research also indicates that tai chi may help:

?- Enhance quality of sleep
?- Enhance the immune system
?- Lower blood pressure
?- Improve joint pain
?- Improve symptoms of congestive heart failure
?- Improve overall well-being
?- Reduce risk of falls in older adults

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