When an Epidural Steroid Injection Might Be Right for You

When you suffer from back pain, even the smallest everyday activities may seem like torture. Besides missing work, you may also be missing out on life in general. 

While there are a lot of treatments out there, not all of them may work for you. However, an epidural steroid injection could be the key to getting your back pain finally under control.

At Peninsula Orthopedic Associates, we specialize in many different types of back pain. Our team consists of a skilled group of orthopedic surgeons who take your back pain seriously. Epidural steroid injections are just one of the many amazing treatments we offer.

What are epidural steroid injections?

Your spine is complex, consisting of bones, your spinal cord, and nerves. While your spine allows you to move and protects your ever-important spinal cord, it can also cause you a great deal of pain. 

When you’re suffering from pain in your low back or nerve-related leg pain, an epidural steroid injection might be able to help. Our doctors use this treatment to inject corticosteroid medications directly into the epidural space in your spine.

The epidural space is the area that’s directly outside of the fluid membrane that protects your spinal cord. Multiple nerves run directly through your epidural space, en route to your lower back and legs.

Inflammation of the nerves in your epidural space can lead to intense pain and discomfort in your back and legs. This is why an epidural steroid injection helps; it decreases inflammation to calm down the painful nerves.

Conditions an epidural steroid injection helps

Epidural steroid injections aren’t for everyone, but they do have the ability to help several back conditions. Our doctors evaluate your symptoms and use X-ray or MRI imaging to determine if an epidural steroid injection is the right treatment for you.

For this injection to work, your pain has to be caused by some type of damage to your spinal nerves. This could be caused by a number of conditions, including:

• Spinal stenosis
• Herniated discs
• Spinal arthritis
• Bone spurs
• Joint cysts

Degenerative disc disease is another condition that may cause compression of your spinal nerves. Many of these conditions not only lead to pain in your back, but intense nerve pain down your legs as well.

There are a lot of different treatments available to you for the above conditions, but nerve pain can be very difficult to successfully treat. An epidural steroid injection is a minimally invasive way to get pain relief, without having to go under the knife.

Benefits of this treatment

If our team of orthopedic specialists determines an epidural steroid injection can help you, there are a lot of benefits you may experience. First, the corticosteroid in the injection helps to soothe the inflammatory response in your nerves, which allows your pain to ease up.

The injections may also help you to eliminate oral pain medications from your daily regimen. An epidural steroid injection may provide pain relief for up to a year at a time. This could mean no more pain medications, and less risk of dangerous side effects.

The pain relief you get from one injection also may help you get back into your rehab routine. Without significant back or leg pain, you may be able to pick up with physical therapy or return to rehabilitative exercise to keep your back pain in check.

Probably one of the biggest benefits of epidural steroid injections is that they may be able to put off surgery for certain back conditions. While this isn’t always the case, these injections are less invasive and have fewer risks than many types of spine surgery.

If an epidural sounds like it might help you,  call one of our conveniently located offices, two in Daly City and one in Atherton, California, or book an appointment online with one of our doctors today.