It is common to experience various forms of back and leg pain. Pain in your back or legs can limit your activities and reduce the quality of your life. Fortunately, several treatments are available today to lift your painful symptoms, including steroid injections. Lumbar Epidural Steroid Injection has been used for decades and has proven effective in managing most back complications, including sciatica and low back pain. Steroid medications or local anesthetic are injected into the epidural space surrounding your nerve roots and spinal cords. Here is more information about the treatment to help you understand the treatment better. Have a look.
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Aim of the Treatment
Your doctor can recommend steroid injections for several reasons. The treatment aims to reduce inflammation around the nerve roots to control your pain. The treatment also aims at helping you get better mobility and function in your legs and back. Additionally, steroid injections are aimed at helping you participate and progress with rehabilitation and physical therapy. The treatment is mainly recommended after conservative and nonsurgical options have been tried without success and before surgery is put in line. The injection offers sufficient pain relief to allow you to do your activities.
Potential Benefits You Can Enjoy
In most cases, steroid injections are beneficial for acute leg or back pain episodes. The main drawback of the treatment is that sometimes it can be less effective and only offers temporary pain relief when effective. But the benefits you can get when the steroid is injected into your lumbar epidural space are more. They include:
Decreased Nerve Pain
The steroids can limit the production of the inflammatory chemicals and minimize the sensitivity of your nerve fibers, causing fewer pain signals to be generated.
Limit Painkillers Reliance
Painkillers can help minimize your painful symptoms. But most of them have some adverse effects when used for a long time. But steroid injections can reduce or eliminate the need for these medications. You only need about three injections per year, unlike regular consumption of painkillers.
Facilitate Rehabilitation and Physical Therapy
It is difficult to go for rehabilitation or practice physical activity, which is crucial for your recovery when you are in pain. But steroid injections deliver enough pain relief to allow you to progress with your rehabilitation program.
Skip surgery
If conservative and noninvasive measures have failed to provide pain relief, steroid injections can ensure you are not yet a candidate for surgery. The injections can help you go on with physical activity to see if you will fully recover from your situation hence postponing surgery.
When Steroid Injections are Necessary
Many factors can contribute to low back and leg pain. But steroid injections are mainly used for pain resulting from complications causing inflammation or irritation t your spinal nerve roots. A common reason for epidural injections is lumbar spinal stenosis, degenerative disc disease, and lumbar herniated disc. Also, leg r back pain that occurs with walking can be treated with these injections.
If you are enduring low back pain or leg pain, you might benefit from steroid injections if you have tried conservative and noninvasive treatments without success. Reach out to the medical practitioners at University Pain Medicine Center. You can make a call to book a consultation appointment or use the online platform.