It’s never easy to live with back, neck, arm, or leg pain. A popular non-surgical treatment, epidural steroid injections (ESIs), offers longer periods of pain-free living. While it won’t cure your pain, it makes it much easier to get back on your feet.
From three offices in Parsippany, Montclair, and Landing, New Jersey, pain management physicians Kevin Elaahi, MD and Benjamin Kim, MD and our expert team at Interventional Pain Consultants provide these minimally invasive spinal injections to quickly relieve your pain and inflammation. Here’s what you should know.
Our team utilizes these injections, which contain both an anesthetic and steroid, to relieve pain for up to months at a time. Depending upon the source and location of your pain, we inject the material into one of three areas:
If you suffer from lower back pain or leg pain (sciatica) due to a lumbar herniated disc or other issue, we inject the pain-relieving medication into the lumbar region of your spine.
When pain involves your middle or upper back as a result of thoracic disc herniation or thoracic spinal stenosis, we may employ an ESI in this region.
When a bone spur, herniated disc, or spinal stenosis puts pressure on the spinal cord or nerve roots in your neck, a cervical ESI helps relieve the neck pain, numbness, or pins-and-needles sensation radiating down your arms.
Your spinal cord runs from your brain to your lower back. The epidural space around your spinal cord holds nerves, blood vessels, connective tissue, and more. When nerve roots in your spinal cord become pinched or inflamed, the resulting pain may radiate to your buttocks, legs, or arms.
Our specialists use ESIs to relieve this pain and inflammation. The steroids:
You may repeat the procedure, as needed, up to a few times per year.
When physical therapy, medication, surgery, or other therapies don’t entirely relieve your back, neck, leg, or arm pain, our expert team may recommend steroidal injections. ESIs can provide longer-lasting relief for a range of conditions, such as:
These injections usually ease your pain for a while to help you return to normal life.
Our team injects steroid medication into the epidural space surrounding your spinal nerves to relieve your problem for weeks or even months at a time.
To receive an ESI, you lie on an X-ray table. Assisted by real-time fluoroscopy imagery, we:
The entire procedure usually takes less than a half hour. After your procedure, you may feel discomfort for a couple of days. Within two to seven days, you’ll find significant relief as the steroid medication begins to work.
The day after your injection, you may experience mild, short-term numbness or sensitivity. Other than that, you’re ready to resume regular activities — with much less pain than before.
Our team conducts a thorough medical history and reviews your symptoms. We may also recommend blood tests, X-rays, CT scans, ultrasounds, or MRIs, to understand the full nature of your pain condition.
While ESIs work well for the majority of patients, those who are pregnant or have glaucoma, diabetes, a bleeding disorder, or an infection may require a different treatment approach.
Our Interventional Pain Consultants team aims to improve your quality of life by reducing your pain. Epidural steroid injections provide relief, giving your body time to heal.
Are you suffering from chronic pain? We can help. Schedule an appointment at your nearest Interventional Pain Consultants office in Parsippany, Montclair, or Landing, New Jersey, today.
