Image-Guided Pain Injection in Lucknow

It is an injection of medicine into or beside a painful structure, placed with the help of imaging. The medicine is usually a long-acting steroid, which reduces inflammation, mixed with a local anaesthetic, which numbs the area. Which medicine suits you is your doctor's decision.

Ultrasound is the usual guide for joints, tendons and soft tissues. It shows the needle tip and the medicine spreading, so the injection lands where it is meant to. Common targets are the knee, the shoulder, a tendon sheath, a bursa (a fluid-filled cushion near a joint) and the area around a nerve that is being squeezed.

The images also help keep steroid out of the tendon itself, where it can cause weakening.

A pain injection can calm inflammation and reduce pain for a period, which may let you move, exercise and sleep better. Relief may start within a few days and can last from a few weeks to several months. Some people get little benefit.

It does not repair worn cartilage, heal a torn tendon or remove the cause of the pain. Doctors use it alongside other care, such as physiotherapy, exercises and changes in activity. The pain often returns if the underlying problem is not dealt with.

Image guidance improves where the medicine goes. It does not change how your body responds, so it cannot promise relief.

A steroid injection acts mostly where it is placed, but some of the medicine enters the blood. In people with diabetes this can raise blood sugar for a few days, sometimes longer. Tell the team that you have diabetes, check your sugar as your doctor advises, and contact your diabetes doctor if readings stay high. Do not change your diabetes medicines unless your doctor tells you to. If you are unsure how well your sugar is controlled, your doctor may ask for an HbA1c blood test first.

Other effects are possible for anyone:

• A flare of pain for a day or two after the injection.
• Flushing of the face, or poor sleep, for a day or two.
• Lightening or thinning of the skin at the site.
• Weakening of a tendon, or damage to a joint, if many injections are given into the same place. This is why doctors limit repeats.
• Infection in the joint, which is rare but serious.

An injection is usually postponed if you have a fever or an infection in the skin or joint. It needs extra thought if your blood sugar is high, you take blood thinners or you are pregnant. Your doctor decides.

A pain injection is a doctor-advised procedure. It follows a diagnosis, usually from an examination, an X-ray or a joint ultrasound. The team at the centre reads your prescription and reports first. It then confirms which injection is suitable, whether it can be done at the centre or elsewhere, and who will do it.

Which injections the centre can do is confirmed from your prescription, so send it to the team before you travel. Injections into the spine are a separate decision, and the team will tell you whether they can be arranged.