Diagnostic Injections & Pain Management

Facts about Pain Management

Steroid injections are often recommended for injuries or disorders that cause irritation to nerves within the spine (lumber, thoracic, and cervical) and joints. Irritation of these nerves may cause pain and/or numbness to the arms or legs as a result of a herniated disk or arthritis.

Basic Facts:

• Therapeutic procedures involve injecting pain relief medication (anesthetic and steroid) in the area of concern.
• Steroid medications can help reduce the inflammation to irritated nerves.
• Regardless of pain relief, therapeutic injections can provide additional information regarding pain symptoms, so physicians can establish the appropriate treatment.  If the medication delivered through a therapeutic injection provides relief, the physician gains insight into the origin of the patient’s pain.
• The quality and length of pain relief varies from patient to patient.  If the injection reaches the source of the pain, the patient will likely experience improvement 2-5 days after the procedure.  Sometimes, more than one injection is required.

The risk of serious complications from these procedures is low.  Risks may include headache, allergy to medications, infection, bleeding, and numbness.  In order to decrease the risk of bleeding complications, patients taking blood thinners such as Plavix, Coumadin, and Lovenox are asked to hold their medications prior to their procedures.  Patients who are allergic to contrast / s-ray dye must be pretreated prior to their procedures.

For all exams, fluoroscopy is used to guide placement of the needle that delivers contrast media and medication to the area of concern.  The contrast media verifies needle placement, and the medication provides pain relief.

After Your Procedure:

• Some patients receiving a steroid injection experience temporary discomfort after the procedure.  This is no cause for alarm.
• If you have high blood pressure, occasionally steroids will make your blood pressure harder to control.
• If you have diabetes steroids will tend to make your blood sugar be higher than normal.

Please let the CAI physician and technologist know if you are taking any antibiotics for an infection.

Steroids can change the way your body responds to infection.  If you have a n injection that does not respond in the usual manner, please notify your family physician of your steroid injection.

Steroids can make the body hold extra sodium.  If this happens, your body will hold extra water and swelling/edema can occur.  Accordingly, you should avoid significant salt intake for three weeks after your injections.

Following your injection, you may engage in activities that do not increase your discomfort, except heavy lifting (no more than 10 lbs.), running or jogging.  Please refrain from strenuous activity for a minimum of 24 hours.

Contrast Media

All exams require contrast media, or dyes, to help enhance the visualization of certain tissues.  If dye is needed, it is administered by injection into a vein.  You may feel a slight sensation during the injection.  Although contrast is not harmful, it’s commonly iodine-based, which can trigger an allergic reaction in some patients.  Those persons who are allergic to iodine should notify their doctor prior to any exam.

Test Considerations:  Women who are pregnant should not undergo X-ray procedures.  It’s important to discuss any allergies, medications and existing conditions with your doctor before undergoing any type of diagnostic exam.