Spinal Facet Injections

Your spine is strong and flexible. Back pain occurs when your spine is damaged or diseased. Your Midtown Manhattan sports medicine and pain management doctor offers injections that can provide dramatic pain relief. Whether you need a thoracic joint injection or lumbar facet injections, the team at the Sports and Pain Institute of NY can help.

Facet joints are made of cartilage and are responsible for your flexibility and ability to bend and twist. Your nerves pass through them to go to other parts of your body. Facet joint syndrome is the leading cause of back pain because the joints are almost constantly in use. Athletes are especially prone to facet joint problems by placing an inordinate amount of pressure on their backs as they twist, turn and move their heads.

Why Spinal Facet Joint Injections?

When giving a facet joint injection, your doctor uses x-ray imagery to inject the joint with a medication consisting of an anesthetic numbing agent and anti-inflammatory steroids. This procedure relieves pain caused by the facet joint.

Some of the most common places your NYC doctor treats facet joint pain are in the neck and the lower back. Facet pain in the neck, head, and shoulders may require a cervical facet joint injection. Upper back and chest pain caused by facets in the upper spine are treated with a thoracic facet injection. Lower back, hip, and gluteal pain from facets indicate treatment with a lumbar facet joint injection.

What Are the Steps in Cervical Facet Injections?

A lumbar facet injection, cervical facet joint injection, and thoracic facet injection are outpatient procedures normally done without anesthesia. The actual injections take only minutes. Overall, the procedure may last 15 to 30 minutes.

While you lie on an x-ray table, your doctor disinfects and numbs the target area. Using x-ray imagery for guidance, he inserts a small needle into the painful joint. A tiny amount of contrast dye is released to guarantee correct needle placement. Once confirmed, the medication is released into the joint.

What Are the Results of Lumbar Facet Injections?

Relief should be immediate because of the anesthetic. Two to five days later, you should experience even longer-lasting pain relief as the anti-inflammatory agent kicks in. You can expect to see a significant reduction of your pain within two weeks at most.

Whether you receive a lumbar facet injection, a thoracic facet injection or a cervical facet injection, the results are powerful if the facet joints are the source of your pain. If the pain is not corrected by the facet injections, they do provide further diagnostic information critical to locating the real source of your pain.

What Are the Risks and Benefits of Cervical Facet Block Injections?

The risks from this procedure are minimal. However, any medical procedure does carry some potential for risk. Although rare, possible risks include:

Allergic reaction
Bleeding
Nerve or spinal cord damage
Discomfort at the point of injection
Slight numbness in your back or neck that normally disappears after a couple of hours

Most people agree the slight risks are worth it for the relief from constant pain. Talk to your experienced sports pain management specialist about your odds of making a full recovery after receiving cervical facet injections. Pain relief may last for as long as six months, which gives your body time to heal. Rest and activity modification, compounded by pain relief, often can be the best treatment, helping you avoid surgical options.

What to Know After Your Thoracic Facet Injection?

After your cervical facet injection is complete, you’ll rest for 20 to 30 minutes in a recovery area. Then your doctor gently guides you through movements that would normally trigger your pain. The movements your doctor has you go through are designed to determine if your facet joints really were the source of your pain.

You need an expert diagnosis to get the best results. That’s what you receive at the Sports and Pain Institute of NY. Your medical team solves your pain problems. They get you out of pain and back in the game. The cervical facet block injections and the lumbar facet joint injection are the gold standards for properly diagnosing facet joints as the source of your spinal pain, while giving you a reprieve from a life of pain and limited mobility.

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.