Some patients may experience more pain than usual after Trigger Point injections once the anesthetic wears off, as the steroid medication can irritate nerves. Place ice at the injection site or take over-the-counter pain relievers to relieve pain. However, these injections don't affect everyone in the same way. Some people experience significant pain relief immediately after injections, while others find that it may take several days or weeks before the pain improves.
A possible complication of the trigger-point injection procedure is post-injection pain. This is relatively rare, but it can happen. This pain usually goes away on its own after a few days and is more common when no medication is injected at the trigger point (dry puncture). Ice, heat, or over-the-counter medications, such as acetaminophen, ibuprofen, or naproxen sodium, may be helpful for post-injection pain.
The risk of complications from trigger-point injections is incredibly low and quite rare. Patients generally report feeling brief numbness or pain at the site of injection. This usually goes away within a few days and is easily treated with heat, ice, or over-the-counter pain relievers, such as ibuprofen, acetaminophen, or naproxen sodium. You should be able to locate both the actual trigger point (also known as the point of maximum sensitivity) and the corresponding pain reference zone, which is usually 1 to 2 cm in diameter. If a steroid medication is injected at the trigger point, there is a risk that the fat under the skin will shrink and leave a dent in the skin.
Trigger point injections can treat chronic muscle pain related to myofascial trigger points, which are bundles of very sensitive fibers in tight muscle bands. Intramuscular injections are for medications that people must inject into a muscle rather than into the bloodstream or adipose tissue. The injections are not appropriate for patients with multiple, diffuse trigger points who have underlying endocrinopathy, such as hyperthyroidism, estrogen deficiency, hypoparathyroidism, hyperthyroidism, pituitary disorders, or Cushing's disease. Trigger point injections can be a safe treatment for chronic pain conditions, such as myofascial pain syndrome, fibromyalgia and tension headaches. All patients who received only abdominal wall injections had a satisfactory response; that is one that resulted in a decrease in the level of pain and disability that the patient considered satisfactory; the response rate to injections of people with trigger points in the vaginal wall was 84.6%.
Trigger points can develop in any of the 400 muscle groups in the body but are usually located near bone junctions and occur most commonly in the larger muscles of the shoulder and pelvic girdle. While trigger point injections may offer significant benefits for some people, several researchers have found that this therapy may be ineffective. In addition to the upper spine, trigger points can also appear in the lower back or less commonly on the limbs. Trigger point injections may provide immediate pain relief for some people while others may not respond to treatment. Trigger point injections are especially useful in patients whose pain has been shown to be resistant to such conservative approaches as massage, physical therapy with stretching and refreshing topical anesthetic sprays. Trigger point injections can help relieve pain caused by conditions affecting the musculoskeletal and nervous systems such as those listed below.
In addition anesthetic-based trigger point injections can cause a serious form of muscle damage called myonecrosis. Doctors use trigger point injections to treat chronic muscle pain and other problems affecting the musculoskeletal system. Trigger point injections may be associated with adverse effects (e.g., temporary numbness irritation at the injection site and dizziness); complications include vasovagal syncope skin infection and compartment syndrome.
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