Lumber facet joint arthropathy

[tamirra]

Hi, my husband has the above problem and due to have lumbar steroid injections,L3-S1, and we are a little concerned with the slight risks which are involved with the procedure which include infection, nerve/vessel injury,dural leak, has anybody experienced any problems if they have had to undergo the procedure, if not, do you thik he would be wise to go ahead and have the injections done as the decision has been left to him. Thank you.

[woofgang]

I think IMO it depends on how much pain/disability the problem is giving him and what else he has tried first.
If the decision is left to him then there is information that he should ask for in order to be able to make a reasoned decision.
I would ask what the rate of improvement is from the treatment, that is to say out of everyone who has it, how many get benefit and how much benefit and what the rate of people who get the risk side effect(s) is.
What risk factors are there for getting a risk side effect (who is more/less likely to suffer) how are the side effect problem treated, what is the clear up rate and how many people end up worse off after the injections.
How many procedures does the hospital/doctor carry out in a year and what is his/her failure rate?
There is loads of useful info on the net. My Dh is currently having medical procedures that carry some risk and what I got from Google was very useful BUT when looking at side effects, remember that all the folk who have the procedure, get great results and no problems are only going to figure as statistics, not detailed reports.
Good luck in whatever he (and you) decide.

[tamirra]

Thank you for your input, he can only have the procedure 3 times, so its plain obvious to me that the success rate can not be that high if it needs to be performed more than once to work, do you see it like this too??

[woofgang]

no not really. Given that they will probably only hit one small area at a time and can only put in a certain amount of steroid at a time, it might take more than one procedure to deal with the problem.
a work colleague of mine had steroid injections in the spine to address chronic back pain many years ago..not sure which joint(s) was injected or what her diagnosis was at its around 20 years ago now. she had a week of serious pain after the injections then was restored to full painfree function. so far as i know she never needed it done again so the treatment can work wonderfully well for some people in some circs.

[tamirra]

Wow that sounds promising, my husband has had back problems since 1989 when he was involved in a terrible RTA head on collision both cars doing 60 on a dual carriage way, he rolled his car 6 times, since this, his back has become steadly worse, so lets hope like your work colleague that it gives him a pain free result. Thank you

[woofgang]

Could kick myself that i didn't add this earlier. Often with this kind of treatment, there are more people need it than resource. Research and record keeping will show that if anyone is going to benefit, it will be within a certain amount of treatments and after that there is unlikely to be further benefit. In these circs, the resource is better used on others and the risk benefit balance for the patient changes no matter how small the risks are.