Epidural Injections
Remedy Pain Solutions is a state-of-the-art medical center specializing in minimally-invasive interventional treatments that address the source of your pains.
Back pain is one of the most common health problems in America and the leading cause of disabilities worldwide. The interventional pain specialists treat numerous patients with back pain every single day. We use epidural steroid injections as our go-to solution for immediate pain relief without surgeries, narcotics, or downtime. Please schedule an appointment with our pain specialists in Marina del Rey to discuss your epidural injection options.
What are Epidural Injections?
Epidural steroid injections treat the inflammation of nerve roots in the spine. The spinal column has numerous nerve roots that run across the vertebrae, carrying the body’s sensory responses. These nerve roots can get pinched or compressed due to bulging discs, herniated discs, bone spurs, spinal stenosis (narrowing of space between the vertebrae), and other factors. Pinched, trapped, or compressed nerve roots get inflamed, leading to painful and tingling sensations in the back, neck, arms, legs, and other parts of the body. Epidural steroid injections reduce the inflammation caused by pinched nerves, providing immediate relief from discomfort.
Candidates for Epidural Injections
Remedy Pain Solutions always performs a comprehensive diagnosis and analysis of the root cause of your condition before the treatment. Our interventional pain specialists ask you to describe your symptoms, review your health history, and perform physical examinations. They might ask you to move the affected areas in different directions to check for swelling, trigger points, and mobility problems. They also run diagnostic tests, like MRIs of the spine, to confirm if you’re a viable candidate for epidural steroid injections.
Generally speaking, you might be a suitable candidate for epidural steroid injections if you have symptoms of the following conditions:
- Spinal stenosis
- Spondylolisthesis
- Disc herniation
- Degenerative discs
- Sciatica
- Other conditions causing inflammation around the nerve roots
The Epidural Injection Procedure
Epidural injections are performed as an in-office and outpatient procedure that concludes within 15 minutes without downtime. Before the epidural steroid injection, you’ll lie face-down to give the pain specialist access to your spine. You’ll receive local anesthesia to ensure a comfortable procedure. Using fluoroscopic guidance, the pain specialist will deliver the anti-inflammatory corticosteroid injection into the inflamed epidural space around the affected nerve roots. This is preferable to oral medications because the medicine directly reaches the targeted epidural space.
After receiving the epidural injection, you’ll be monitored for 15 to 20 minutes to ensure there aren’t any adverse reactions. After that, you can have someone drive you home. Most patients report almost immediate relief from spinal pain after the epidural injections. However, epidural injections only reduce the inflammation caused by the pinched nerves — they don’t address the root cause of the problem. As such, epidural injections provide relief for around three months, following which you may need additional treatments.
If you have a serious underlying condition, our pain specialists might discuss long-term solutions, such as regenerative medicine, while delivering epidural injections for immediate relief.
