If you suffer from chronic pain, ultrasound-guided injections may be a great solution to manage your pain. Ultrasound-guided injection treatment is an interventional, minimally invasive procedure in which ultrasound is used to pinpoint the proper placement of pain medication via injection.
What Are Ultrasound-Guided Injections?
Imagine delivering medication directly to the spot where you feel pain, rather than taking an oral pain-relief medicine and waiting awhile for it to work. This is exactly the purpose of ultrasound-guided injections. Doctors use ultrasound-guided injections as a pain management technique to help patients deal with chronic pain symptoms.
Here are examples of the types of medications ultrasound-guided injections can deliver:
Pain Medications and Steroids
Ultrasound-guided injections deliver pain medication, steroids, or anti-inflammatory medication directly to the source of pain by using an ultrasound machine to guide the needle into the precise desired location. Unlike taking oral pain medication that gets distributed all over your body, pain-relief injections target the pain directly. This allows for more effective and efficient treatment and faster pain relief.
PRP Therapy
Ultrasound can also be used for procedures such as platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injection therapy. PRP therapy delivers a concentrated amount of platelets from the patient’s own blood to the desired area that requires healing. The concentration of platelets offers healing characteristics that help speed up the healing process. PRP therapy is always delivered through injection, and doctors can use ultrasound guidance to deliver the plasma to the exact desired spot.
Where in the Body Are They Used?
While ultrasound guidance is very effective in delivering a variety of medications and therapies, it is also beneficial because of the variety of places on the body where you can use it to deliver medication. Here are a couple of examples:
Facet Joint Injections
Pain-relief injections can be used to deliver relief to inflamed facet joints, which are the joints that connect each set of two adjacent vertebrae in the spine. Pain in the spine’s joints can cause pain in the neck, back, and legs. Ultrasound guidance in facet injections can be performed safely and effectively, without harming the sensitive nerves in the area. By delivering pain-relieving medication to the facet joints in the spine, you can reduce pain in all of these places.
Trigger-Point Injections
These injections are effective in delivering medication to trigger points, which are small areas in a muscle that are extremely sensitive and painful. Trigger points can develop for a variety of reasons, such as injury, overuse, and muscle tension. Ultrasound-guided injection treatment targets the trigger points for effective relief.
Pain Management in Delaware
Ultrasound-guided injections use advanced technology to deliver concentrated pain relief without the need to disrupt other tissues in the body. If you are experiencing chronic pain, ultrasound-guided injection treatment may be able to help you control your pain quickly and with long-term benefits as compared to other pain-relief methods.
Our team at the Delaware Back Pain & Sports Rehabilitation Centers has the expertise and knowledge necessary to perform ultrasound-guided treatment as well as other interventional pain management techniques. If you have chronic pain, request an appointment online today at one of our convenient locations across the state. We look forward to hearing from you.
