Chronic back pain has a significant impact on your ability to work and enjoy leisure activities. Back pain may keep you in bed many days, and you may even suffer with side effects from medication used to treat the pain. Your doctor has several approaches to consider for treating your back pain. One of them is interventional injections. Here's how they work and how you receive the injections.
Interventional Injections Target Irritated Nerves
Interventional injections are injections given to a precise location near your spine. They are intended to target a specific nerve that's irritated and sending pain signals to your brain. The medication that's often used with this therapy is a strong anti-inflammatory steroid that decreases swelling so pressure and pain along the nerve is reduced. Effects of interventional injections vary.
You may feel results for a few weeks or several months, but it's likely that you'll need a few injections over the course of a year to keep your pain under control. Interventional injections are given along with other forms of pain management in an effort to postpone surgery until it can no longer be avoided.
Spinal Injections Are Given With The Help Of An X-ray
An injection in your spine sounds painful, but you won't have discomfort because the area is numbed first. Plus, you may be given IV sedation to help you relax. The corticosteroid drug is injected through your back and guided to the precise location through the use of fluoroscopy, which is a type of x-ray.
Before your interventional injection therapy begins, your doctor has to identify which nerve is responsible for your pain. This might be done through imaging tests such as an MRI, or through diagnostic injections that locate the irritated nerve when an anesthetic injection results in relief of pain.
You May Need To Limit Activities For Several Days To Recover
There is no long recovery period from an interventional injection. The injection is given as an outpatient, and you can go home shortly after the procedure. However, you'll want to rest for the remainder of the day. You should be able to gradually increase your activities depending on how your back pain responds. Your doctor will advise you on when you can return to normal work duties and recreational activities depending on the type of work you do and sports you play.
Interventional injections aren't necessarily the right treatment for everyone. Sometimes, other therapies such as physical therapy can help. However, when you have back pain that doesn't respond to the usual treatments and it looks like surgery is in your future, interventional injections could be the solution for your back pain so you can stay mobile and postpone surgery as long as possible. Contact a provider, like Joel D Stein DO PA, for more help.
Is your knee stiff and painful every morning when you get out of bed? Perhaps, you sometimes feel a grinding sensation in your knee. If you can relate to this frustrating situation, you might be suffering from osteoarthritis. Thankfully, several treatments are available for this joint condition. Sometimes, physicians recommend patients battling osteoarthritis of the knee take a prescription painkiller. Doctors also often encourage patients to lose weight and start a low-impact exercise program. Swimming and walking are both great forms of low-impact exercise. On this blog, I hope you will discover how to effectively and quickly relieve the painful symptoms of osteoarthritis of the knee. Enjoy!