Spine injections

Everyone experiences back pain at some point. But long-term pain can disrupt your life and stop you in your tracks. At Atrium Health Floyd and Harbin Clinic, our orthopedic specialists offer personalized care to bring relief. Whether you could benefit from a spine injection, physical therapy, medications or surgery, we're here to help you find the treatment that's right for you.

What is a spine injection?

A spine injection is a treatment to decrease pain in your back, hips and legs. A doctor injects medication called cortisone, which is a strong anti-inflammatory, or a local anesthetic, which is a numbing medicine, into your spine.

Some spine injections are short and take only a few minutes. Others take an hour to perform. Spine injections are outpatient treatments, which means you return home the same day.

Types of spine injections

There are several types of spine injections, including:

• Discogram: This injection is diagnostic. Your doctor injects a contrast dye into your spinal discs. They use an X-ray or CT scan to watch the dye spread through your discs. This test may help identify which disc is causing pain.
• Medial branch block: This injection is diagnostic. Your doctor injects an anesthetic near your medial branch nerves, which sends pain signals from the facet joints in your spine. Facet joints are likely the cause of your pain if the injection brings relief.
• Radiofrequency ablation: Your doctor may perform a radiofrequency ablation if a medial branch block shows your medial branch nerves, which send pain signals from your facet joints, to be the cause of pain. During an ablation, your doctor uses high-frequency radio waves to generate heat and safely burn the nerves.
• Selective nerve root injection: Your doctor injects cortisone and an anesthetic into a specific nerve. The goal is to decrease inflammation and identify which nerve is causing pain.

Conditions spine injections treat

Spine injections may treat an array of conditions that cause back, neck and hip pain, including:

• Arthritis
• Degenerative disc disease
• Facet joint syndrome
• Herniated discs
• Radiculopathy, including sciatica
• Sacroiliac joint problems
• Spinal stenosis
• Spondylolisthesis

Spine injection side effects

It's normal to have some temporary side effects after a spine injection, such as:

• Face flushing
• Hiccups
• Increased hunger
• Pressure at the injection site

It’s important to realize that you may not notice improvements until several days after the injection. Some people have more serious complications such as bleeding, infection, allergic reactions or nerve injury. These effects are extremely rare.