What are steroid injections?

Medical steroids are artificial steroids that mimic the function of the body’s natural steroids, for example by helping to reduce inflammation. Steroid injections apply this to local areas of the body where the muscles, joints or nerves may are inflamed, damaged or hypersensitive.

How long does it take to feel the effects?

This depends on the severity of the condition and the type of steroid used to treat it. Steroids which give longer-term (e.g. up to two months) pain relief will usually take approximately one week to start acting.

What conditions do steroid injections treat?

Steroid injections are commonly used for arthritic and musculoskeletal conditions such as osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia, sports injuries, back pain or sciatica.

Side effects

Steroid injections can cause the pain to worsen temporarily, shortly after the injection. Fortunately, this will only occur occasionally and can be managed with domestic painkillers such as ibuprofen. Other potential, but again uncommon, side effects include a thinning of the skin where the injection took place. Injections always carry a risk of infection but this is very small when carried out correctly, by the specialists at Pain Management Wales.