When we think of epidural injections, most of the time we picture how it’s used to provide pain relief during birth. However, they are not confined to this singular use. Epidurals are also a tool for all sorts of pain relief and reducing nerve inflammation related to the spine. There are plenty of conditions that can be treated with epidural injections in an effective and adaptable way depending on the patient’s needs.
Treatment for Neck Pain
Stress, bad posture and lesions can all create chronic neck pain that can extend and become chronic headaches or migraines. This can be deeply incapacitating as people experiencing this pain are not able to function while the pain is at its worst, needing bedrest a lot of the time until the pain has subsided.
Neck pain is pretty common, around 48% of women and 38% of men report experiencing it. The numbers go up as we age and our spine loses some of its strength.
Cervical epidural injections can treat chronic neck pain. They inject steroids into the area that help the pain subside for 6 months or more. Beyond the pain management, they also show a positive psychological effect in patients, and can diminish dependency on medication pills that can be damaging to the kidney in the long run.
University Pain and Spine Center offers epidural injections as a form of treatment to help you regain mobility and agency.
What Are Thoracic Epidural Injections For?
Injuring the back is way easier than what we might imagine. Falling onto a sitting position can be very dangerous. Whether it’s a sports injury or something that happened at work, you can end up with persistent pain in your back.
If your pain sits in the middle of your spine, a steroid thoracic epidural can also be an excellent way of managing pain. During the recovery process, regaining mobility to be able to do the necessary physical therapy is something everyone should strive for. Steroid thoracic epidurals provide mid and long-term pain relief to aid this. University Pain doesn’t offer physical therapy, but we do have excellent professionals that you can rely on to help manage your pain.
They can also be a good treatment when the pain is non-relenting after other therapies have been attempted. The way they work is that the steroid is injected into the epidural space next to the nerve, and helps block the pain signals traveling to your brain.
Lumbar Epidural Injections For Spinal Stenosis
Lumbar epidural injection with anesthetics are the ones you think about when talking about child-birth. Unlike cervical and thoracic injections, they are not applied directly on the spine, but inserted through the sacral bone into the end of the spinal cord to provide localized pain relief.
But they are also useful for painful and persistent medical conditions such as spinal stenosis. This is a condition where the space in the spine that the nerve goes through is or becomes too narrow, compressing it. Although it can happen anywhere in the spine, it’s most commonly found in the lumbar area.
Herniated disks affecting the lower part of the spine and sciatica can also be treated with lumbar epidural injections with a fairly low risk and very positive results.
Spine Pain Management at University Pain & Spine Center
If you need treatment for back pain, at University Pain & Spine Center we have the ideal treatments and medical staff to help you recover. Epidural injections are part of the therapies we offer, and we encourage you to talk to our doctors, and find out if they are the right choice for you.
With our expertise and clinical focus on the spine and pain relief, we will do everything to find a way to make your quality of life better, and return to the way your life was before chronic back pain. Don’t hesitate to contact us and schedule an appointment.