You rely on your joints to stand, walk, climb, and lift. However, because you need your joints to move, they’re highly susceptible to injuries and conditions that cause pain. Joint pain is common and can hinder your movement and quality of life.
If you have chronic joint pain, you may want to know more about joint injections and how they can help you get relief.
Our medical experts at Obstetricians & Gynecologists, PC, in Grand Island and Hastings, Nebraska, provide comprehensive care for your general health through our primary care services. Here, we tell you about how joint injections help with pain management and how frequently you can get them to keep your pain under control.
Joint injections are a minimally invasive treatment for joint pain. These injections usually contain a corticosteroid to reduce inflammation and a local anesthetic to provide immediate pain relief. We inject the medication directly into the area of the pain to help you get relief.
Health care providers administer joint injections into different areas of the body, including:
Viscosupplementation is a type of joint injection for knee pain that’s due to osteoarthritis. This injection is a gel-like substance that lubricates the joint to reduce the friction that causes discomfort.
Our primary care providers may recommend joint injections if your joint pain is due to inflammation. We only recommend injections if you fail to get relief from other, more conservative medical interventions like rest, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), and physical therapy.
Osteoarthritis, tendinitis, and rheumatoid arthritis are some of the inflammatory conditions we treat with joint injections.
Joint injections may not provide pain relief right away, but you may start to experience improvements in your discomfort in about 2-7 days. The length of your pain relief may also vary, lasting anywhere from a few weeks to several months.
Not everyone who gets joint injections experiences pain relief. But if the injection eased your pain, we can repeat it. We give you additional joint injections every six weeks or so, but we don’t recommend more than 3-4 injections in a year.
We limit total injections because there’s some concern that too many steroid injections into a joint could damage the cartilage. If joint injections fail to provide significant relief, we can refer you to an orthopedic specialist to discuss other options.
Whether you have a minor injury or chronic joint pain, our primary care team can provide the medical services you need. Call the Obstetricians & Gynecologists, PC, office nearest you today or request an appointment through this website.
