How Facet Joint Injections Can Keep You Moving and Out of Pain

Persistent back pain can keep you from being active or resting comfortably – but you have treatment options available to resolve your discomfort. At Performance Pain and Sports Medicine, our back pain treatment experts — Dr. Suzanne Manzi and Dr. Matthias Wiederholz — offer facet joint injections from our locations in Houston, Texas, and Raritan and Lawrenceville, New Jersey.

Want to learn more about facet joint injections? Here’s what we want our new and existing patients with back pain to know about this minimally-invasive treatment and diagnosis tool.

What are facet joint injections?

Your facet joints can be found at each vertebral level of your back and neck, along the whole length of your spine.

Within healthy facet joints, cartilage keeps things moving smoothly, and synovial fluid provides an additional lubricant. It’s easy for your facet joints to sustain damage, either due to daily wear-and-tear or because of the trauma of an accident or injury. Inflammation and pain in your facet joints becomes persistent back pain.

Facet joint injections deliver a direct dose of anesthetic medication to damaged or inflamed facet joints. Facet joint injections can also work as an effective tool to help diagnose the location and source of your persistent back pain problem.

How do facet joint injections help with pain?

We use a long-lasting steroid medication for your facet joint injections. The medication, typically combining an anesthetic and an anti-inflammatory drug, reduces inflammation and provides pain relief in the targeted treatment area.

An injection appointment is quick and simple. You lie face-down on a table. We numb the injection area with a local anesthetic to keep you from experiencing discomfort during your treatment.

X-ray guidance techniques called fluoroscopy help your Performance Pain and Sports Medicine provider position the injection needle within the targeted facet joint. Most patients can return to normal activity the day after a treatment session.

Your results with facet joint injections may vary, typically taking about 3-7 days to appear. Your pain relief results can be long-lasting, working for multiple months at a time. You may also be able to benefit from a sequence of injections over the course of several weeks or months.

How facet joint injections can keep you out of surgery

Most facet joint injections target your lumbar spine, a common source of low back pain. Our team can direct your facet joint injections to the location where the treatment can do the most good to resolve your pain symptoms.

Back pain that doesn’t respond to conservative treatment options can lead to surgery. Before you take such an invasive step, find out what facet joint injections can do to reduce your pain and keep you moving easily. 

Your provider may recommend facet joint injections in combination with other conservative pain management approaches like physical therapy.

To learn more about how facet joint injections could help to release you from your back pain problems, keeping you moving smoothly forward into the new year, get in touch with the interventional pain management experts at Performance Pain and Sports Medicine today. 

Schedule your initial consultation appointment by calling our office most convenient to you or requesting an appointment online anytime.