A Closer Look At Our Injections

A lot of treatment options are available for orthopedic conditions. Physical therapy and home care are some of the best ways to relieve your pain and get back to your busy life.

However, when those treatments don’t work, you don’t have to go right to surgery. Orthopedic injections have the ability to ease your discomfort through minimally invasive procedures.

At Vital Orthopedics, our team takes your pain seriously and offers many treatments that help. If you’re in need of a pain-relieving injection, our orthopedic specialist, Dr. Robere Missirian, provides many forms of this treatment.

When do you need an orthopedic injection?

When you’re suffering from an injury or arthritis, pain relief and restoring functionality are the two goals our team has for you. Initially, this means at-home care, like rest and anti-inflammatory medications.

Physical therapy is also a great tool to help you regain strength and reduce discomfort in your body. However, these treatments only go so far, especially when you have osteoarthritis or tissue damage within your joints.

The next step in treatment is usually some form of injection. There are many forms of injections, each of which works in a specific way to reduce inflammation and heal tissues at the site of degeneration or injury.

If you’ve suffered a sports injury or a fall and have a sprain, strain, or fracture, injections like corticosteroids or regenerative medicine are used to reduce swelling, rebuild tissues, and get rid of your pain.

Injections are also used for chronic orthopedic conditions like osteoarthritis or degeneration in your spine. Nerve blocks are used to reduce pain related to nerve compression, while viscosupplementation helps with knee arthritis.

Types of injections and how they work

At Vital Orthopedics, our doctors offer several different types of injections to get you feeling better. They evaluate your symptoms along with imaging studies to determine the right type of injection for your problem. A few of the injections we offer include:

Viscosupplementation

This injection contains hyaluronic acid, which occurs naturally in your joints. This substance acts as a shock absorber and provides cushioning to your joints. 

Viscosupplementation injections are typically given in your knee joint when you have osteoarthritis. It helps to restore lubrication in your knee joint to ease the discomfort of joint pain.

Regenerative medicine

Both stem cells and platelet-rich plasma are forms of regenerative medicine that our team uses to help your body heal from the inside out. Both of these injections are derived from your own cells.

Stem cells have the ability to transform into any tissue or cell that your body needs. For instance, if it’s injected into muscle, the stem cells form new muscle cells to generate new tissue growth and heal damage.

Platelets, on the other hand, contain powerful growth proteins that allow them to heal damage in your body over time. The platelets and plasma are taken from your blood and separated in a special machine. Once the concentration of platelets is high, our team injects them into your injury or area of pain to begin the process of healing.

Corticosteroid injections

Corticosteroids are strong anti-inflammatory medications used for a number of orthopedic conditions. Our team gives them for pain in your joints and back, especially when you’re suffering from an injury or osteoarthritis.

Along with the corticosteroid, the injection contains a local anesthetic to help numb the area. These injections provide long-term pain relief when other treatments haven’t helped.

Trigger point injections

If you’re suffering from “knots” in your muscles, a trigger point injection can help. Typically, these injections are given in your back, neck, shoulders, arms, and legs.

To help rid you of muscle pain, the team uses a local anesthetic mixed with a strong corticosteroid to help reduce inflammation in the muscle and allow it to relax. This usually helps reduce your pain significantly.

Nerve blocks

Nerve blocks serve two purposes — relieving pain and being a diagnostic tool. Our team sometimes uses them to determine where your pain is originating. For this type of injection, only a local anesthetic is used to relieve pain.

In other cases, you might get a nerve block for long-term relief in your spine or joint. During this type of injection, the team uses an anesthetic along with a corticosteroid to reduce inflammation surrounding a group of nerves. This allows the nerves to heal and your pain to be reduced.

To find out which injection is best for you, call one of our offices in Pompano Beach, Fort Myers, Hollywood, or Lake Worth, Florida, today to book a consultation. You can also request an appointment on our website.