Epidural Steroid Injection
Epidural Steroid Injections (ESI) may be of interest to you if you have neck and arm pain (cervical ESI), posterior rib pain (thoracic ESI) or low back and leg pain (lumber ESI).
What are the anticipated benefits?
Epidural Steroid Injections can provide valuable information on the source of your pain and may reduce inflammation, resulting pain relief from a week to a few months. If no relief occurs, another type of injection may benefit you.
How does it work?
An Epidural Steroid Injection takes 20-30 minutes for the actual procedure. However, you will be asked to wait an additional 15-30 minutes after the procedure so that the clinic staff can monitor your symptoms.
You will lie on your stomach on a special table in our Diagnostic and Therapeutic Injections (DTI) suite. The C-arm (a special x-ray machine) can be rotated to allow the radiologist to monitor the injection to make sure he is precise in targeting the pain source. In addition, the table can be easily rotated to help the contrast dye move to the area of interest.
One of our specialized radiologists will insert a thin needle containing contrast material into, or adjacent to, the epidural space thought to be causing your pain He will inject the contrast material to help highlight the epidural space and ensure correct placement of the needle for the procedure.
Then, he will slowly release a combination of anti-inflammatory (steroid) and anesthetic (numbing) medications into the epidural space to decrease inflammation of the nerve roots and relieve the pain.
Are there any risks or negative side affects?
Complication rates with Epidural Steroid Injections are very low.
As with all injection procedures, the contrast dye contains iodine, so patients with a known allergy to iodine may have an adverse reaction. However, because the contrast is injected into a joint and not a vein, allergic reactions are rare.
The steroid medications used to treat the pain may cause facial flushing, occasional low-grade fevers, hiccups, insomnia, headaches, water retention, increased appetite, increased heart rate, and abdominal cramping or bloating. These side effects are bothersome in only about 5% of patients and commonly disappear within 1-3 days after the injection.
Women should always inform their physician or CDI technologist if there is any possibility that they are pregnant or breast feeding.
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