If you’re involved in a car wreck, you might experience trauma to the cervical spine called “whiplash.” Or if you’re tackled on the football field, you might sustain an injury to the lower lumbar spine, leaving you in severe pain when walking or getting out of bed in the morning.
It’s hard to carry on with your life when you’re dealing with back or neck pain, and you might end up becoming a slave to painkillers to manage your condition. That’s no way to deal with the situation and could potentially leave you addicted to dangerous medications like opioids.
We have another, more pragmatic and non-addictive therapy for you to think about; Facet Joint Injection Therapy (FJIT). It involves a couple of hours at your doctor’s office, and you’re ready to go home and live your life, pain-free. Doesn’t that sound like a better alternative to using dangerous drugs?
Let’s run through the specifics of what it takes to assess you for this therapy and how it works.
Patient Assessment for Facet Joint Injection Therapy
Taking Your Medical History
The doctor starts with conducting a comprehensive audit of your health and family history. They look at the meds you’re using and ask you if you have any allergies to determine whether you’re a right fit for the therapy.
Physical Examination
The doctor runs a physical exam on your spine to rule out an alternative source of your pain. This stage of the assessment notes the source of your pain and whether FJIT is the right choice for you, or if you could benefit from an alternative therapy solution.
Labs and Imaging
The doctor orders the necessary bloodwork test, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), or X-ray tests to assess the extent of damage and inflammation in the facet joints. After completing the assessment, the doctor refers you to a spinal specialist, anesthesiologist, or pain management doctor, and they’ll perform the FJIT procedure.
A Guide to the Facet Joint Injection Procedure
The MRI scans and X-rays give the doctor accurate information on precise injection of the medication into the joint. It takes around 15-30 minutes for the procedure, and you’ll stay in the doctor’s office for another hour afterwards for monitoring before going home. That’s’ it, you’re in and out in less than two hours.
The doctor typically won’t numb the site before the procedure as it causes complications surrounding the pain relief experienced by the patient after receiving the injection. If you’re feeling anxious about the procedure, your doctor may prescribe medications to calm you down and put you in the right head space before starting the procedure.
If you’re sedated for the procedure, you’ll need someone to drive you home, or you’ll have to call an Uber, but under no circumstances should you be driving after receiving medication that suppresses your reaction time and awareness.
FJIT is a simple five-step process, and we’ll outline the specifics of it below.
Step #1 – Preparation
If you’re receiving the treatment in your neck (cervical spine), the doctor has you lay on your stomach or side. If you’re receiving treatment for your lower back, the doctor positions you on your stomach, face-down, sometime placing a small pillow under your tummy to flatten the spine and reduce its curvature.
Step #2 – Anesthetic Administration
The doctor cleans the skin over the injection site to prevent infection and applies a local anesthetic to numb the joint.
Step #3 – Needle Insertion
They insert a needle into the facet joint under the direction of guidance from imaging tech like your X-rays or MRI results, allowing for precision placement of the needle.
Step #4 – Safety Protocol
Before injecting the corticosteroids or anesthetic into the facet joint, the doctor pushes in a small amount of dye to see that the needle is in the joint and not in a blood vessel.
Step #5 – Administer Medication
The doctor administers the medication and pulls out the needle immediately after injection. You’ll have to hang around the doctor’s rooms for up to an hour post-procedure to ensure you don’t have any adverse reactions to the therapy.
Complementary Treatments for Facet Joint Injection Therapy
Depending on your injury and condition of the facet joint, the doctor may prescribe you NSAIDs or painkillers. It takes a few days, sometimes a week, for the effects of the medications used in the injection to reach peak efficacy where they offer you the most pain relief. The doctor looks at your condition and results to determine the best approach to your treatment, offering the least side effects and risk to your health.
Recovery from a Facet Joint Injection Procedure
Most patients notice an intense pain-reliving effect after a few hours post-procedure. As the anesthetic wears off, you’ll feel the full effects of the treatment. Depending on the local anesthetic used in the procedure, you’ll experience it wearing off anywhere from two to eight hours.
You won’t notice immediate pain relief as the anesthetic wears off. Typically, it takes around 48 to 72 hours to feel the effects of the corticosteroid injected into the joint to reach peak efficacy. If you don’t experience any sense of pain relief during the diagnostic or anesthetic phase of the process, it means the facet joint probably isn’t the source of the pain.
Getting Back to Your Daily Life After Facet Joint Injection Therapy
You can get back to your regular life the day after undergoing the FJIT procedure. Doctors will typically recommend that you avoid submerging the injection site in water for at least 48 hours after the procedure to reduce infection risk.
If you exercise, you’ll need to wait until your pain symptoms improve, which may take up to a week after treatment. Don’t jump back into an intensive routine, start slow and build into it over a few weeks to minimize the risk of the pain returning.
In Closing: What are the Long-Term Medical Outcomes from Facet Joint Injection Therapy
The extent of pain relief experienced by the patient differs depending on their diagnosis, and the injection type recommended by the doctor. Typically, FJIT involving corticosteroid medications or anesthetics offer relief for between two to four months or longer, and thereafter, you’ll need to repeat the treatment if necessary.