5 Pain Conditions That Can Benefit From an Epidural Steroid Injection

Living with daily pain is one of the biggest quality-of-life issues, and unfortunately a lot of us find ourselves in this boat. Chronic pain affects nearly one-quarter of adults in the United States, which is a surprisingly large chunk of the population.

As a pain management practice, our goal at Apex Pain Specialists is to be a place where pain ends. Under the direction of our board-certified pain management experts, Dr. Naveen Reddy and Dr. Maziar Massrour, we offer the tools that do just that, and one of our true workhorses is the epidural steroid injection.

Here’s a look at how this simple pain management tool is bringing relief to millions, and the conditions that we can treat with an epidural injection.

Epidural injections at a glance

The primary reason why epidural steroid injections are so effective in relieving pain is that we target pain at its source: your central nervous system. This system includes your spinal cord and brain and it’s the epicenter of all that you feel, including pain.

With an epidural injection, we target the outermost space of your spinal canal, where nerve roots exit the canal — 31 pairs in total.

First, we identify the nerve roots that are involved in your pain and then we hit them with an anesthetic and steroid to tackle both pain and inflammation.

To do this, we use fluoroscopy, or live X-ray, to guide the injection(s). Afterward, you’re free to go home and your results should be fairly immediate thanks to the local anesthetic. The steroid component takes longer, but it can provide you with longer-term relief.

It’s impossible to say what your results will be as some patients experience pain relief for a few weeks after the epidural injection while others experience relief for months to years.

Where epidural steroid injections can make a big difference

Now let's take a look at a few of the conditions that we routinely treat with epidural steroid injections, including:

1. Herniated discs
2. Spinal stenosis, which affects 11% of the older population
3. Degenerative disc disease (DDD)
4. Sciatica, which affects between 10% and 40% of people
5. Failed back surgery syndrome (FBSS)

These conditions are the primary culprits behind chronic back and neck pain, but all too often the pain isn’t confined to these areas.

With most of the spine issues on our list, radiculopathy is possible. With this condition, the nerve root compression causes symptoms, such as pain, numbness, and tingling, to travel down the nerve and into your arms or legs.

For example, when the sciatic nerve in your lower back is irritated, you can experience symptoms down one side of your buttocks and legs. Or, if you have a herniated disc in your neck, it can compress a nerve root in your cervical spine and lead to symptoms in one of your arms and hands.

With an epidural injection, we can tackle the problem at its origin point to alleviate both local and radiating symptoms.

If you’d like to see whether an epidural steroid injection can provide you with the pain relief you’ve been looking for, we invite you to call our office in Chandler, Arizona, at 480-820-7246 or book an appointment online today.