Epidural Injections

When a problem in your spine leads to back and neck pain, an epidural injection can give you the relief you need to get back to your favorite activities. At Austin Sports Medicine, serving the community in and around Central and South Austin, as well as Bee Cave, Cedar Park, and Pflugerville, Texas, the board-certified orthopedic surgeons have experience performing safe and effective epidural steroid injections. To learn if you’re a good candidate, call one of the offices or request an appointment online.

What is an epidural injection?

An epidural injection is a treatment named after the fat-filled area of your spine where the medicine is released, the epidural space. This space surrounds and protects the spinal cord.

Epidural injections typically contain a steroid and a local anesthetic. Steroids are strong anti-inflammatory medications, while the anesthetic produces rapid but short-lived pain relief.

When your provider injects steroids into the epidural space near inflamed nerves, the medication can flow around the nerves. As the steroids reduce inflammation, you get relief from the pain.

Steroids take a few days to work. Once the medication takes effect, the results can last from weeks to a year or longer. 

Everyone metabolizes steroids differently, however. There’s no way to predict how much pain relief you’ll experience or how long your results might last. If you have only mild pain relief, your specialist may recommend one or two additional epidural injections to improve your results.

When would I need an epidural injection?

Your Austin Sports Medicine provider uses epidural injections to alleviate neck, back, leg, and arm pain that’s caused by inflamed nerves. This type of inflammation can be caused by different spine problems, such as: 

• Disc herniation
• Facet joint arthritis
• Bulging disc
• Sciatica
• Spinal stenosis
• Radiculopathy
• Degenerative disc disease

An epidural injection can also help relieve the pain of a neck or back injury when the injury causes inflamed spinal nerves.

What should I expect during an epidural injection?

When you have an epidural injection, Austin Sports Medicine uses real-time imaging to view your spine and guide the needle. They numb the injection site with a topical anesthetic and carefully guide the needle into the epidural space.

After placing the needle near the targeted nerves, your provider first injects a contrast dye and watches the way it flows as it enters the epidural space. By observing the dye, they can verify that the medication will flow around the inflamed nerves. Then, they inject the steroid medication and remove the needle.

You can walk around as soon as your injection is finished, but you should plan on staying in the office for a short time to be sure you don’t have any problems.

To learn if an epidural injection can relieve your pain, call Austin Sports Medicine or book an appointment online today.