When oral medications fail to provide significant relief from your pain, you may want to consider cortisone shots. These injections reduce inflammation and ease pain. At AABP Integrative Pain Care, with offices in the Bensonhurst neighborhood in Brooklyn, and White Plains, New York, the team specializes in interventional pain procedures like cortisone shots. To find out how cortisone shots can help you, call the office most convenient to you or schedule an appointment online today.
Cortisone shots, also known as corticosteroid shots, ease inflammation and pain in the area of the body where your provider injects them.
The injection contains a local anesthetic and a corticosteroid. The local anesthetic provides immediate short-term pain relief, and the corticosteroid reduces inflammation and swelling, providing long-term pain relief.
Your provider at AABP Integrative Pain Care and Wellness determines if you’re a candidate for cortisone shots after a consultation. The team may consider you a candidate if you have an inflammatory pain condition that’s not improving with medical interventions.
Conditions that benefit from cortisone shots include:
The team uses cortisone shots to treat any type of joint pain, including pain that affects the small joints in your hands and feet.
The AABP Integrative Pain Care and Wellness team provides specific instructions on what you need to do to prepare for your cortisone shot. However, you may not need to make any special preparations before the procedure unless you take blood-thinning medication.
Cortisone shots may increase your risk of bleeding, and the team may request you stop taking blood-thinning medications and supplements several days before the injection.
After you change into an exam gown, your provider has you sit or lie on an exam table. They clean the skin at the site of your shot with an antiseptic agent and may apply a local anesthetic to reduce pain during the procedure.
Your provider inserts the needle and uses ultrasound-guided imaging to ensure accurate placement, then injects the medication.
You may need to take it easy for a day or two following your cortisone shot or modify your usual activities to reduce the use of the treated joint.
You may have an increase in pain and inflammation during the first 48 hours, but these side effects subside, and you should notice improvements in your pain over the next week or so.
Though results vary, your cortisone shot may provide pain relief for two or more months.
To find out more about cortisone shots and how they may help ease your pain, call AABP Integrative Pain Care and Wellness or schedule an appointment online today.