People with lower back pain often receive steroid injections to ease inflammation and suffering. The number of steroid shots you can get is limited, however, because cortisone-type drugs can slow wound healing and speed bone deterioration.
A new study from Johns Hopkins suggests that injections of saline or local anesthetic may work about as well as corticosteroid injections. The mere act of injecting fluid around the spinal column appears to accelerate healing.
These epidural injections were twice as effective at alleviating as intramuscular injections of steroids. It is encouraging to have evidence that this sort of prolotherapy can be effective without the damaging side effects of powerful corticosteroids.
Some People’s Pharmacy visitors have shared their experience with prolotherapy for joints. Bocabayla said: “I can tell you from personal experience prolotherapy works. I had muscle and ligament pains that started from an injured knee. The pains in the knee got better, leaving me with just the muscle and ligament pain.
After having the dextrose shots over a 3 week period, directly into the areas of pain, a month later, those pains are all but forgotten.”
But the procedure is not universally successful. (What in medicine is?) CFP related: “Prolotherapy treatment did not work for me at all. It was the last treatment I tried before going ahead with total knee replacement surgery. I had several injections directly into the pain area 4 to 5 weeks apart that did absolutely nothing for my knee pain. I previously had several knee injections of SYNVISC and SUPARTZ over the years that worked for a while and basically delayed the need for surgery. However, after a while these injections stop working also.
“I am not a big fan of surgery, but with my replaced knee I can ski and play tennis with no pain; however the recovery was not easy and required a lot of physical therapy. That’s the trade off, I guess. Anyway, these injections will not build up new knee cartilage.”
