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Steroid Injections Better Option than Physical Therapy

 

There has long existed a divide in the medical community regarding treatments for pain in the neck, back, and shoulders and which are the most preferable. Perhaps a little surprisingly, most studies show that steroid injections fair equally or even better than physical therapy despite requiring far less effort in far less time.

Steroid injections in the shoulder are made up of cortisone, an anti-inflammatory medication that was discovered just over 50 years ago, earning Hench a Nobel Prize for Medicine for its breakthrough in pain-care. In the shoulder alone, it can help:

  • Rotator cuff disease
  • Adhesive capsulitis
  • Glenohumeral osteoarthritis
  • Acromioclavicular joint disease

A common misconception regarding steroid injections is that they are extremely painful, but though the needles may look daunting, when injected, they hurt no more than a commonplace injection needle you are already familiar with.

Corticosteroids are used in diseases on tissues in the shoulder and related areas because it allows doctors to find out the cause of the damaged tissue on the area of stress while simultaneously working to repair the tissue. Injecting anesthetics into area of pain firstly relieves pain, and soon allows you to move your shoulder normally within a far shorter time-span than in physical therapy.

When using steroid injections, the anesthetic wears off within four to six hours, and then the patient is likely to experience mild discomfort for the following days, but is then followed by complete pain relief. If the patient feels that the pain has returned, it is always possible to simply get another steroid injection. This seemingly too-easy technique is almost too good to be true, and the only drawback is that they may not always work, depending on the type of injury you have. Because physicians may not always know the exact type of pain patients may be suffering from, the steroid may not be able to cater to it. If the target area is still weak after the injection, then maybe the problem is an actual tear in the tissue rather than a disease or soreness in the tissue. Though actual tears in the tissue are rarer and occur in the more severe cases, in this case, physical therapy is needed.

As far as the cost goes, steroid injections are less expensive than therapy because they only involve one visit to the doctor rather than repeated visits to therapy sessions. In this same way, it requires less time for someone who runs on a busy schedule. Opinions may vary on whether steroids or physical therapy is the preferable outlet of pain management for them specifically; however, on paper, steroids certainly seem the more easier, cheaper, and effective for most cases.