Joint Injections

Why have a joint injection?

Joint injections or soft tissue injections are very good at settling down pain and stiffness from inflamed joints or soft tissues e.g. ‘Frozen shoulder’. The injection is usually a combination of an injectable steroid eg Depomedrone and a local anaesthetic.

Who should perform joint injections?

They are excellent treatments as long as they are done by a clinician very experienced in performing them. Under these circumstances they should be quite quick, fairly pain free and should start working in 24-72 hours after the injection.

I have been carrying out joint injections and soft tissue injections in every clinic I have worked in for over 30 years. It gives me great satisfaction to perform very successful injections which are also not particularly painful.

Most patients I have treated come away saying ‘that was much better than I expected’.

Which joints can be injected?

Joints that can be injected in the clinic are knees, shoulders, wrists, elbows, ankles, finger and toe joints.

Soft tissue injections:

Steroid injections are also very good at treating soft tissue problems such as subacromial bursitis (i.e. Frozen shoulder’), Greater Trochanteric Bursitis (ie the bursitis near your hip), Tennis and Golfer’s elbow (but these need to be performed sparingly) and to relieve carpal tunnel syndrome or trigger finger.

Guided injections

Sometimes the radiology department is needed to perform guided injections to help settle down joint pain that either has not settled with the first injection e.g. Frozen shoulder or a very small finger or toe joint or to inject into the actual hip joint or sacroiliac joint (as these joints are too deep to reach by touch so need the XR machine to guide them).