Chronic pain can occur in many forms and be due to a plethora of underlying causes. Happily, the providers at Apex Medical Center understand the impact of chronic pain on your life, and bring their skills and experience to bear in helping you learn to manage your pain.
One pain management treatment that you may not have heard of before is trigger point injection therapy. This post explains what trigger points are, and how injection therapy might help ease your pain.
A trigger point is a tight knot of muscle. Usually it’s not like the knots you might feel in your shoulders after a hard day. Instead, a trigger point can be very small and very deep in your muscle tissue.
Trigger points can be painful, and you can sometimes feel them when you press on your muscle. They can also cause “referred pain,” which means they can cause pain somewhere far away from the actual trigger point.
When you have trigger point injection therapy, your provider injects a small amount of anesthetic and steroid into the muscle knot. The injection allows the muscle to relax.
Some people experience immediate relief after the injection, but it may take a day or so for the muscle fibers to fully relax and your pain to dissipate. It’s also possible that trigger point injection therapy won’t work for you at all, and you need a different treatment approach.
There are very few risks or reports of problems related to trigger point injection therapy. You may have some redness or numbness around the injection site, but no more than you would with any injection.
If you and your provider decide that trigger point injection therapy is a good tool for your pain management, you may be surprised at the simplicity of the procedure.
You may be sitting or lying down. Your provider locates your trigger points and injects them with the anesthetic or anesthetic and steroid mixture. That’s it.
If you have multiple trigger points, your provider may suggest doing several injections on the same day.
If you get a good result from trigger point therapy, you may want to begin having injections regularly. You may not need this; a single therapy session may last for a long time.
You, your pain, and the underlying causes of your pain are unique. One of the most beneficial aspects of getting care at Apex Medical Center is that our specialists create a care plan that’s designed for you and your life.
Even if two people have exactly the same condition, they experience it differently. Our providers understand that fact, and work closely with you to find ways to manage your pain rather than suggesting a cookie-cutter approach.
Trigger point therapy may be one part of your overall pain management plan. You may also need physical therapy, medications, or to use other pain management tools.
If you’d like to learn more about pain management in general, or if you have specific questions about trigger point therapy, book an appointment at Apex Medical Center. We have three locations for your convenience, and you can schedule an appointment at any of them using our online tool, or simply by calling the office.
