Nerve Root Injection

Nerve root blocks are useful to diagnose and treat back pain.  Nerve root blocks can be used to anesthetize the desired nerve for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes.  Once the symptomatic nerve root is known, targeted steroid injections are used in an attempt to produce long-term relief, primarily in patients with radiculopathy. 

Multiple causes of radiculopathy have been discovered.  It is usually the result of pressure on or inflammation around the nerve root.  This causes pain within the nerve root, which is referred along the course of the nerve (radiculopathy).  Because steroids have an anti-inflammatory action, injections around the nerve root may reduce inflammation, thereby decreasing or eliminating the pain.