Epidural Injections Specialist

What are epidural injections?

Epidural injections are an advanced treatment for back and neck pain. They contain cortisone, a powerful anti-inflammatory steroid medication. Epidural injections often have a local anesthetic in them that temporarily numbs the pain.

Your doctor at Southeast Spine Care & Pain Management injects the medication into the epidural space that surrounds your spinal cord.

The local anesthetic in an epidural steroid injection offers immediate but short-lived pain relief. The steroid is long-acting, reducing inflammation and pain for several months in many cases.

What conditions can epidural injections treat?

Your Southeast Spine Care & Pain Management doctor might recommend an epidural injection if you’re experiencing pain in your neck, arms, back, hips, buttocks, or legs. Conditions that can benefit from epidural injections include:

• Spinal stenosis
• Herniated discs
• Bone spurs
• Sciatica
• Spondylolisthesis
• Degenerative disc disease
• Spinal arthritis

In many cases, these conditions cause nerve compression (radiculopathy). Inflammation in the tissues around your spine puts pressure on the nerves leaving your spinal cord, causing pain, numbness, tingling, and other unpleasant sensations. Depending on which spinal nerves are affected, you can experience weakness or a loss of function.

Epidural injections relieve nerve pain and other symptoms by reducing tissue and nerve inflammation.

When would I need an epidural injection?

Epidural injections are rarely one of the first treatments you receive for spinal pain. Physical therapy, aquatic therapy, medications, and platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections successfully relieve most people’s symptoms.

But if your condition doesn’t respond to these initial treatments, your Southeast Spine Care & Pain Management doctor might suggest you try an epidural injection.

What happens when I have an epidural injection?

Epidural injections are usually an outpatient procedure. They don’t require any preparation on your part. Dr. Bosch uses imaging technology to view the needle’s path. This ensures that the medication goes into the epidural space without causing tissue damage.

Epidural injections take between 15 and 45 minutes. You might sense pressure where the needle goes in. The procedure shouldn’t be painful, though, because they anesthetize the area beforehand.

After your epidural injection, you have a short recovery period. Then, you can go home. You should feel immediate pain relief thanks to the local anesthetic. While this wears off quite quickly, the steroid should reduce pain over the longer term. Some patients benefit from their epidural injections for a year or more.

To find out how you can get relief from back and neck pain with an epidural injection, call Southeast Spine Care & Pain Management today or book an appointment online.