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36 W 44th St Ste 1416 New York, NY 10036
Injuring one of your feet while playing a sport is fairly common. Despite all the bones, ligaments, tendons, and muscles in your feet, they can be quite fragile when placed under awkward pressure. A steroid injection in the foot eases your pain. And if you suffer from rheumatoid arthritis in your foot, a cortisone injection in the foot can help. Get a cortisone injection for foot pain so you’re not hobbled by an injury or a disease. Make your appointment today in our sports injury and pain management clinic in New York to get your foot pain evaluation and treatment.
Even if you’re not on your feet all day, your feet still get a workout from your normal daily activities. Pain and inflammation in your feet not only slow you down but also impact your attitude. Instead of suffering through weeks of foot pain, see your sports injury specialist for a cortisone injection in the foot.
Cortisone is a corticosteroid medication. It’s derived from the most common hormone that your adrenal gland releases in times of stress. It actually contains a healing mix of anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving medicine. Your sports doctor often injects a cortisone shot into a painful joint to ease the pain, reduce the swelling and promote healing.
Your qualified sports pain doctor in Manhattan, NY may recommend a cortisone injection for foot pain when you’re dealing with specific medical conditions or injuries, such as:
Getting the shot is a simple procedure done right in our pain management office. Depending on the reason for your steroid injection in the foot, your physician may put all of the medication in one insertion point or in several, to surround and coat the problem area with the medicine. The whole procedure takes less than 15 minutes.
The injection ingredients include saline, steroids for inflammation and a local anesthetic for immediate pain relief. So the injection eases your pain right away. But after the anesthetic dissipates, within about three hours, the pain often returns.
The steroid anti-inflammatory drugs often don’t start working for a couple of days after your injection. At that point, you’ll experience what pain relief from a steroid injection in the foot feels like. And relief lasts for several months.
You may notice some minor side effects from the injection. Most often, these are temporary. Side effects include:
While you should feel pain relief immediately after the injection due to the anesthetic, you have to be watchful for a few days before the steroid medication starts working. The normal precautions of most medical treatments apply for a cortisone injection in the foot:
You may feel a little more pain in the days that follow your injection, but the pain should disappear by the third day, as the steroids start working. If the pain is drastically worse or you come down with a fever, contact your doctor right away.
I can’t thank Dr. Melepura enough I had excruciating foot pain and contacted him for an injection he squeezed me in for a last minute appointment and was super quick and gave me a lot of information including injury prevention. Great doctor and experience.
AddamRisks are low when your shot is administered by a trained physician. But the risks include:
To prevent cartilage damage, your NYC pain and sports doctor limits the number of injections you can have to about three or four per year, spaced at least six weeks apart. Because of this limit, a cortisone injection in the foot is not a long-term strategy for chronic pain. It’s a technique for easing pain temporarily, while your body heals.
The pain-relieving properties and anti-inflammatory effects of steroid injection in the foot can also help you deal with pain in other parts of your body. If it’s not your foot but your ankle that hurts, your doctor can give you an ankle injection to fight the pain of an ankle injury. In most sports, your feet and ankles take a beating; spare yourself the pain of an injury with a cortisone injection.
A steroid foot injection is aimed at reducing inflammation and swelling of the muscles, tendons, and ligaments within your foot joint. In most cases, less inflammation means less pain. A foot injection is an outpatient procedure performed right in your doctor’s office.
Steroid injections in your foot are considered a safe and effective treatment option. Side effects tend to be minor and rare, they are easily minimized in the trusted and experienced hands of the experts at our sports injury clinic.
You may experience a certain degree of pain at the injection site. The level of pain depends on your pain tolerance. Several factors that influence the pain of the injection are the location of the injection and the gauge and size of the needle. Patients report that injections into the sole of the foot are especially painful. Injections tend to hurt most when the cortisone is delivered to a small space. The pain level encountered during the procedure can be significantly reduced if the injection is performed by experienced specialists at our sports injury clinic.
A steroid foot injection begins to work immediately after the procedure. Inflammation tends to subside within a few days. The timing of pain relief varies from a few days to a few weeks. It depends on how quickly the inflammation disappears. Patients who have undergone a cortisone shot NYC treatment report a gradual decrease in symptoms over a span of 2 days to 2 weeks. In the case of severe or long-term inflammation, the injection may take longer to kick in and may require more than one injection.
The benefits of steroid injection can vary depending on the individual. Typically, foot injections last anywhere between 6 to 12 weeks if used alone. Longer-term relief can be achieved if a foot injection treatment is combined with other rehabilitation treatments like physical therapy.
Following your steroid foot injection, you will experience relief from your pain either immediately or within the first 48 hours. Your individual case is influenced by a variety of factors, including your underlying conditions and your age. Pain relief will assist in restoring the function of your foot that has been impaired by inflammation.
As mentioned above, the procedure is performed on an outpatient basis. It does require an overnight stay at the hospital. The whole process takes between 30 minutes to an hour, including the time needed for monitoring. You can walk out of the office and resume your normal activities on the same day as the procedure. But, you should stay away from any strenuous activity involving your foot for at least 48 hours.
During your recovery period, you should stay away from any strenuous activity that involves the injection site for at least 48 hours. You may experience an increase in pain or have a flare-up around that time. This is considered normal and temporary. Therefore, you should not worry. Post-injection pain can be managed by ice and over-the-counter painkillers.
The most common reaction to a steroid injection in your foot is cortisone flare-ups. It tends to subside when the cortisone starts working. If you encounter severe pain around the injection site that does not go away for a few days or other serious complications, call your healthcare provider immediately.
It is okay to take a shower on the same day of the procedure. But, you have to avoid applying heat to the injection area for at least 72 hours. Hot packs, saunas, or steam rooms during this period are strictly forbidden.
The majority of insurance companies cover steroid injections. This is especially the case if you suffer from severe pain that has not improved with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, exercise therapy, or lifestyle modifications.
Repeated cortisone shots are believed to damage the cartilage within a joint. For this reason, specialists limit their usage. In general, it is not recommended to get steroid injections more than 3 to 4 times a year. These shots should not be received more often than every six weeks.
Febin Melepura, MD is a top rated, best in class interventional pain management doctor. He is a nationally recognized pain relief specialist and is among the top pain care doctors in New York City and the country. He is an award winning expert and contributor to a prominent media outlets.
Dr. Febin Melepura has been recognized for his thoughtful, thorough, modern approach to treating chronic pain and, among other accolades, has been named a “top pain management doctor in New York”, and one of “America’s Top Doctors™” for an advanced sports injury treatments.
