Benefits & Risks of Steroid Injections [View all]
Back pain is the number-one reason people visit their doctors, and epidural steroid injections have been a mainstay of treatment for short-term pain relief for decades. The injections seem to be most effective for people who have "radicular" pain, or pain that radiates from the spine to a leg or an arm, caused by a herniated disk. Even so, relief is often only temporary, and injections should be limited to no more than two or three a year.
Experts aren't quite sure how worthwhile the injections are for other conditions since research findings from clinical trials are inconsistent. Because of the small number of high-quality scientific studies on epidural steroid injections, strong recommendations for their use are lacking.
The American Academy of Neurology's (AAN’s) guidelines state that "epidural steroid injections play a limited role in providing short-term pain relief for lower back pain that radiates down a leg and do not provide long-term pain relief." Specifically, they say that the average amount of relief is small and lasts only two to six weeks after injection. And, says the AAN, the injections don't "buy time: to avoid surgery.
Similarly, the American Pain Society suggests that epidural steroid injections may be used for radicular pain caused by a herniated lumbar disk, but the group falls short of strongly recommending them.
http://www.healthcommunities.com/back-pain/steroid-injections-benefits-risks.shtml
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