If you have persistent or chronic pain, you might have heard about trigger point injections – TPI. Doctors use these injections to manage the pain that affects your musculoskeletal system. Muscle pain results from a variety of reasons, including wrong sleeping positions and intense weightlifting. Sometimes it alleviates after few days of rest, while in some cases, it requires medical treatment such as trigger point injections.
If chronic muscle pain is affecting your activities and functionalities, you can opt for immediate pain relief. Read on to learn more about its efficacy and uses.
What Are Trigger Point Injections?
It treats chronic back pain related to myofascial trigger points. Typically, these points contain tight bands and sensitive bundles of fibers. The doctor determines the severity of the condition to suggest the best type of medicine. In general, TPI includes:
A local anesthetic – that block pain receptor
A corticosteroid – reduce inflammation
Botulinum toxin A – prevent muscle contraction by interfering with the nerve signaling pathway
With the help of a small needle, the doctor injects the medicine to the myofascial trigger point. You may feel a crunching sensation that diminishes as the muscle relaxes.
Additional Benefits of TPI
Trigger point injections can help relieve the pain due to the following musculoskeletal and nervous system conditions.
Myofascial Pain Syndrome
It is a chronic condition that affects muscles and surrounding tissues. The medicine injected by the trigger point reduces the localized pain by relaxing the muscles. The whole body gets relaxed by these injections.
Fibromyalgia
The pain and tenderness in specific trigger points result in fibromyalgia. Sometimes it shares the symptoms of arthritis, but it affects the soft tissues of the body. The trigger point injections can manage the widespread and systematic pain of fibromyalgia.
TPI for Back Pain
In acute lower back pain, that causes inflammation and muscle spasms in the back muscle, doctors suggest trigger point injections. There are various ways to diagnose the trigger points, such as palpations and twitch responses. Trigger points in the lower back regions cause muscle stiffness that leads to chronic back pain.
You can opt for a pain management clinic that offers trigger point injection treatment to reduce the pain. If your lower back pain is muscle-related, the inactivation of the trigger point alleviates the pain.
Do they Work for Back Pain?
Trigger point injections are the best for you if other medications and treatments are not working. It provides quick pain relief and an improved range of motion. However, some people may experience immediate pain relief, while others require treatment of days and weeks because some trigger point needs more than one injections.
In the TPI procedure, the doctor injects an anesthetic or saline to inactive the trigger point. The injection will take few minutes, and you can experience sustained pain relief. The doctor can inject more than one site in one visit. However, if you are allergic to some drugs, the doctor will use the dry-needle technique.
Doctors suggest TPI for leg, lower back, and neck regions. Additionally, it is effective for fibromyalgia and myofascial pain syndrome. However, it is an effective treatment for back pain without any side effects.
