Joint Injections
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Procura Pain and Spine
Pain Management located in The Woodlands, Shenandoah, TX
Joint pain from arthritis and connective tissue damage is a common problem that often responds well to conservative therapies. If you don’t find relief from treatments like oral medication and physical therapy, Kenneth Wu, MD, Thomas White, MD, and Yoann Millet, MD, of Procura Pain & Spine in Shenandoah, Texas, offer image-guided joint injections. These injections deliver powerful anti-inflammatories and painkilling medication directly into your joints for effective relief of your symptoms. To find out if you can benefit from joint injections, call the office or book an appointment online today.
Joint Injections Q & A
What are joint injections?
Joint injections can help increase your mobility and relieve joint pain.
The team at Procura Pain and Spine often use injections in joints such as the hips, knees, and shoulders, but they're also effective for treating facet joint pain in your spine, the sacroiliac joints in your pelvis, and other joints like wrists, ankles, elbows, fingers, and toes.
Steroid injections use powerful anti-inflammatory medication to ease pain and swelling. They often contain an anesthetic as well, which stops the nerve endings from sending pain messages back to your brain. Other injectables such as stem cell therapy are also excellent joint pain treatments.
Why would I need joint injections?
Joint stiffness and pain can make it hard to carry out everyday activities, work, or play sports. You may need joint injections if other treatments don’t relieve your symptoms. Oral anti-inflammatory and painkilling medications can also help, along with physical therapy, bracing, and complementary therapies like acupuncture.
When treatments like these don’t produce sufficient improvement, joint injections are the next step. They can successfully treat a variety of conditions, such as:
- Osteoarthritis
- Rheumatoid arthritis
- Carpal tunnel syndrome
- Tendinitis
- Bursitis
- Gout
- Facet joint arthritis
- Sacroiliac joint dysfunction
- De Quervain's tenosynovitis
- Cubital tunnel syndrome
Joint injections can also ease inflammation and pain when you incur an acute injury like a sprain or strain.
What happens when I get a joint injection?
Your provider at Procura Pain and Spine begins the procedure by sanitizing the injection site, then applies a local anesthetic to numb your skin and underlying tissues.
They carefully guide the needle into your joint with help from an X-ray technology called fluoroscopy. To enhance the fluoroscopy images, your provider might also inject a contrast dye.
When the needle reaches the correct position, your provider injects the mixture of anesthetic and steroids. Then they slowly withdraw it and apply a small bandage to the injection site if necessary.
How soon do joint injections start to work?
Many patients notice some pain relief within two or three days of their injection, which continues to improve over the next few weeks.
You might require further joint injections to achieve the optimal effects. Results can last for several months, and some patients find they feel the benefits for a year or more.
If you have joint pain and can't find a treatment to relieve your suffering, call Procura Pain and Spine to schedule a consultation or book an appointment online today.