When Is an Epidural Steroid Injection the Best Choice for Chronic Back or Neck Pain?

Neck pain and back pain often involve inflammation, swelling, and damage to discs that cushion the cervical and lumbar spine, keeping the bones in your neck and back from rubbing together. When discs are injured or swollen, nerves can get pinched, causing chronic pain. Oral medications can only do so much.

At Integrated Spine and Pain Services, serving patients in Northern Virginia, Alexandria, and Falls Church, Virginia, Dr. Daniel Kline and his team of interventional pain experts provide epidural steroid injections to lessen or even eliminate spine pain, whether it’s present in your neck or your lower back.

How epidural steroid injections work

If you are suffering from neck or back pain, epidural injections are considered a conservative measure that can provide relief by reducing inflammation in the epidural space, which is the fluid-filled sac that surrounds your spinal cord and protects the nerves.

We inject anti-inflammatory steroids combined with an anesthetic into this epidural space, using a contrast dye and anesthetic. A contrast dye and X-ray imaging ensure that Dr. Kline delivers the dose directly to the point causing your pain, numbing the affected nerve(s) and giving the anesthetic time to work on relieving inflammation and pressure.

Who can benefit from epidural injections

An epidural injection could be right for you if you suffer from any of the following conditions:

• Chronic neck pain (cervical pain) 
• Chronic low back pain (lumbar pain)
• Sciatica (pain in the nerve that runs from your spine to your hip and down your leg)
• Herniated (bulged or slipped) discs that are pressing on nerves
• Degenerative disc disease (also a source of nerve pinching)
• Lumbar spinal stenosis (a narrowing of the canal through which the spinal nerves run)
• Compression fractures in your spine (causing inflammation and pressure on the nerves)
• Cysts along your spinal column (which press on your spinal nerves)

Injections typically offer relief starting one to three days after the injection takes place, and lasting for several weeks or months. For some people, injections up to three or four times a year provide a satisfactory remission of pain symptoms. 

If the injections wear off after just a few weeks, and the pain returns, we’ll need to explore other options. Doctors advise against constant steroid use due to the long-term side effects, such as increased blood sugar levels and hormonal imbalance.

For patients who don’t get satisfactory results from steroid injections, we will create a supplementary pain management plan to help keep you comfortable and flexible. You have plenty of conservative options to help reduce your pain, and our entire team is on your side. 

Are you suffering from back pain? An epidural injection might help relieve your symptoms. Contact one of our offices by phone today or send us a message using our online form on the contact page.