Spinal injections are one of the front-line non-surgical methods of producing almost immediate and long-term pain relief. While there’s no guarantee that any pain management technique will work perfectly in your particular case, injections into various areas of the spine have shown the capacity to work effectively in conjunction with physical therapy or medications. Sometimes they are used to delay surgery, to recover faster after surgery, and even as a diagnostic tool to establish exactly what is causing the pain in the first place.
If the thought of having a needle anywhere near the part of your body that holds you upright makes you want to run screaming away from your computer, we’d like to say, “Please don’t.” In the hands of a skilled practitioner like Dr. Kaufman, there’s a good chance your injection experience will create no more than mild discomfort and almost certainly be less painful than the agony your spine currently has you mired in.
Why in the Spine?
Of course, no one wants a needle inserted into their spine, but there are very good reasons to choose this method over others. Oral medications take a shotgun approach in which 99 percent of the desired effect may never reach the precise trouble spot. With a steroid injection, a powerful anti-inflammatory solution can be targeted to the precise problem. While every spinal injury is different, often these types of injections provide months of lasting, blessed relief.
That’s worth a little pinprick isn’t it?
Why Steroids?
Thanks to a few professional baseball players who swatted home runs at an inhuman pace back in the mid-1990s, steroids received a general slandering in the media like no other medicine ever has. The truth is that there are two different types. Anabolic steroids – the kind that make you bigger and stronger – are what sluggers Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds (allegedly) used to launch all those moonshots.
The kind used in a medical setting are called steroids also but are classified as corticosteroids and are simply a synthetic drug that resembles cortisol, a natural body hormone. These steroids are probably the best way to tame an out-of-control immune system and reduce inflammation and pain known to man.
If you’re in the Miami area, call 786.369.4010 today to schedule an appointment with Dr. Kaufman to discuss the ways he can help bring your pain under control.