Patients who have joint pain might spend decades looking for an effective treatment. Many patients won’t want to get surgery or joint replacements, especially if they’re still young. Some of these people might benefit from joint injections. Experts like Ignacio Guzman, MD can administer these injections and give patients the opportunity to treat their joint pain symptoms. Joint injections won’t necessarily cure joint pain completely, but they can help many patients manage these difficult symptoms.
Receiving Joint Injections
The administration of joint injections literally involves inserting specialized steroids into different damaged joints. These are specifically cortisone injections, and they’re able to replicate some of the effects of cortisol. Since cortisol can already help to prevent problems with inflammation throughout the body, it can have a powerful effect on the inflammation that can occur within individual joints.
There might be some excess fluid around the damaged joint that will have to be removed. Injecting medication into an area that already has too much fluid could lead to swelling and other problems. The removal of this fluid could also be an important part of the healing process since the accumulation of even minor amounts of fluid at the joint level can worsen some symptoms.
Knee injections are particularly common, but so are wrist and ankle injections. People tend to put a lot of pressure on those three joints, even over the course of a normal day. Joint pain can be more noticeable when it occurs in any of these three joints, potentially making the situation worse. By injecting the cortisone right into the joint, experts ensure that the medicine will be as effective as possible. Patients might not get the same results if they receive the cortisone in any other way.
Many treatments for joint pain require a hospital visit, but this is not the case with joint injections. These procedures can be performed quickly. Patients will need a local anesthetic at the injection site, but they won’t need anything more substantial than that in order to prevent problems with discomfort. Obviously, the area has to be sterilized as well. However, other than that, joint injections are simpler than many of the treatments that address similar problems.
Joint Pain Treatments
Some patients will get joint injections as an alternative to surgery. When joint pain is serious enough, surgery might be the best option. However, some patients get surgery to treat joint pain that really could have been effectively addressed using outpatient treatments.
Surgical procedures are permanent. While surgical patients will need checkups, and their joint replacements may eventually need to be replaced, they’ll always have to live with the effects of the initial surgery. Some people are concerned about taking a step like that, especially since it isn’t possible to completely control the outcome of any surgery.
Most of the surgeries that relate to the joints are safe, and they’re performed frequently. However, all surgeries have risks. Some patients will continue to have problems with joint pain after their surgeries, making the procedure feel redundant.
Patients won’t be taking that sort of risk if they decide to get joint injections instead. These relatively simple treatments might be enough for some individuals, especially if they decide to get the injections consistently. The results might last for as long as six months at a time.
