Types of Intra-Articular Injections That Can Help Combat Arthritis

You’re tired of joint pain standing between you and the activities you love, and you want to find relief. You share that misery with more than 92 million Americans living with arthritis or arthritis-like symptoms. If your joint pain stems from osteoarthritis (OA), which affects 32.5 million people in the United States, one of the first lines of defense is the intra-articular injection.

While there may be no cure for OA, the team of pain management specialists here at Commonwealth Pain and Spine offers two types of intra-articular injections that can go a long way toward restoring your quality of life, and we review them here. 

Tackling the pain and inflammation in one shot

No matter which joint is giving you trouble (or perhaps there’s more than one), one of the best tools in our arthritis arsenal is a corticosteroid injection. These injections contain two ingredients:

Local anesthetic

One reason corticosteroid injections are so effective is that we administer a local anesthetic that provides you with near-immediate pain relief.

Steroid

For longer-term relief of your OA symptoms, this intra-articular injection contains a steroid that reduces the inflammation in your joint. The steroid may take a little longer to work, usually within a week, but the reduction in swelling can provide you with significant relief from joint pain and stiffness.

Corticosteroid injections not only provide relief, they also allow you to take more meaningful steps toward addressing your OA, especially through targeted physical therapy that helps to shore up the tissues surrounding your affected joint.

Restoring lubrication

Some of your joints rely on a natural lubricant called hyaluronic acid (HA), namely your knees. When you have knee OA, this acid can break down, leaving the bones in these large joints to grind together, quite painfully. By replenishing the HA in a procedure we call viscosupplementation, we can help your knees function more smoothly and without pain or stiffness.

In most cases, we administer a series of HA injections, which has been shown to provide relief for six months in up to two-thirds of people.

Choosing an intra-articular injections that’s right for you

To determine which intra-articular injection is right for you (and it may be both), you first need to come see us so that we can evaluate the joint damage and discuss your symptoms and your goals.

Once we have a clearer picture, we can recommend a treatment plan that will best fit your needs.

To get started on finding relief from your arthritis pain through intra-articular injections, make an appointment with one of our pain management experts at a location near you. These locations include St. Matthews, Elizabethtown, Lexington, Crestview Hills, Owensboro, and London, Kentucky. Indiana offices are in Evansville, Vincennes, New Albany, Carrollton, and Jasper. We also serve patients in Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati, Ohio.