Joint injections are a very effective treatment solution for migraines and chronic headaches. Headaches and migraines can often start as pain in the neck and surrounding joints.
When you treat those areas directly, you can block the pain signals, therefore preventing a migraine from occurring. Migraines can have many different causes, so depending on the cause of your migraine, a single injection could last anywhere from days to months.
Causes of Migraines
Migraines are a type of headache that can last anywhere from a few hours to even days depending on the severity. Migraines can be a debilitating condition that can affect all aspects of a patient’s life. You can experience pain, nausea, vision problems, and/or sensitivity to sound and light. There are many different causes of migraines including but not limited to; hormonal imbalances and stress levels.
Traditional over the counter headache medications are not as effective for most migraine sufferers; and many avoid prescription treatments because the treatment is often opioids.
Facet Joint Injections
Facet Joint Injections could provide relief from your migraine pain. These joints are located on either side of your spine. If these joints are inflamed, they can cause a lot of pain in the head, neck, back and shoulders. This type of pain can cause tension and lead to migraines.
During your facet joint injection, a local anesthetic will be injected into the joint first. If your pain is lessened, after the injections, then we’ll be able to deduce that the facet joint is the cause of your migraine pain.
After the anesthetic, the steroid injection is injected into the facet joint with a fluoroscope. In most cases, you can expect to return to your everyday routine the very same day, with just mild tenderness at the site of the injection. While these injections can give you great relief, Facet Joint Injections are not a long term solution for migraines and can only be administered a few times per year.
Epidural Injections
Epidural injections inject a corticosteroid with a fluoroscope into the epidural space of the spine. This reduces inflammation and pressure over time, greatly reducing migraines. The epidural injections results can last a patient a week to over a year. These injections can treat migraine pain immediately and have more long-lasting relief.
Creating a Plan for Relief
Joint injections can provide you with short term relief from migraines that would otherwise disrupt your everyday life. Progressive Pain and Interventional Psychiatry can help you develop a long-term plan to help you prevent and manage your migraines so that you can live a healthy, pain-free life. Call our office to schedule a consultation today (214) 826-8000