If you suffer from painful areas of knotted muscle or fascia tissue, trigger point injections offer a path to relief. These are among the advanced therapies available from Rizwan Khan, MD, of Bluegrass Bone & Joint, LLC, in Louisville, Kentucky. When you’re ready to learn more, call the office to set up a visit. Online booking is also an option, and can be done from home, at any time of day or night.
Trigger points are painful knots of tissue within a larger muscle group. They can be formed from muscle tissue or fascia tissue. Trigger points are tender to the touch, and can cause localized pain.
They can also create referred pain in other areas of the body. This referred pain can activate other trigger points in new areas.
Trigger points can feel like tiny knots or lumps beneath the surface of your skin, and they’re relatively easy to diagnose.
They can occur in any area of the body, but are most common in the lower back, calf muscles, hamstrings, and the muscles on the sides of your neck just above your shoulders.
A variety of things can cause trigger points to develop. These include:
In some cases, there’s no clear cause of trigger points. You can experience a single trigger point or many. Some people develop trigger points at many points in their lives, while others only have trigger point pain around the time of muscle strain or an injury.
Trigger point injections are a treatment that can relax knotted areas of tissue and relieve the tenderness and pain of trigger points. These injections introduce a mix of anesthetic and steroid medications into the tissue.
The needles used in trigger point injections are extremely thin, and there’s no significant pain associated with the injection itself.
The pain medication relieves discomfort from the knotted tissue, and the steroid medication reduces inflammation and helps the tissue relax. Many people report immediate relief after trigger point injections, and you can have multiple trigger points treated during the same visit.
Trigger point injections can help treat headaches, fibromyalgia, and myofascial pain syndrome.
There are relatively few risks associated with this treatment, but you might experience temporary pain or numbness at the injection site, minor bleeding, and sensations of lightheadedness or dizziness.
If you have questions about this pain management treatment, schedule a face-to-face consultation today at Bluegrass Bone & Joint. Online booking is available, or you can always call the office to find a time that fits your busy schedule.