Injections in the lower back, or lumbar spine, are used to diagnose and treat pain in the lower back (lumbar spine). They can help you figure out what's wrong or take away your pain. A local anesthetic and an anti-inflammatory (steroid) medicine are injected into the lumbar spine during a minimally invasive procedure called a lumbar spinal injection. The steroid medicine can help with pain for a long time.

Epidural steroid injections (ESI) are a way to treat certain conditions that cause chronic back pain. For ESI, a mix of steroid and local anesthetic is injected into the epidural space. This is an outpatient procedure. On each side of your back, your doctor will use a different method. Your condition and whether or not you have metal rods or screws from a previous surgery will help decide which method to use.

During an ESI, your doctor uses an x-ray to guide a needle into the epidural space and to the nerves that are causing your pain. You will also get an injection of a contrast dye to make sure that the steroid medicine goes where it needs to.

The most common way to give a spinal injection is through the lumbar spine. It is done by putting a needle between two back vertebrae. Most of the time, magnetic resonance imaging is used (MRI). This lets the doctor see the spine and find any problems that need to be treated.

MRI also helps the doctor figure out what kind of procedure or treatment will help the patient the most. For example, a radiculopathy caused by a herniated disc far to the side may respond better to an epidural injection than to a transforaminal approach.

The caudal block is an injection into the lumbar spine that is often used to treat pain in the lower back caused by nerve irritation or inflammation. The injection has both an anesthetic and steroid drugs in it to help reduce pain and inflammation.

When the needle is put through the sacrum, which is the big bone at the back of your spine, the drugs go into the epidural space (the area around the nerve roots of the spinal cord). It is often used to help children and adults with a wide range of long-term pain conditions.

Spinal stenosis, a herniated disc, and facet joint arthropathy can all cause back pain. Injections in the lumbar spine can help relieve this pain. This interventional treatment for radicular pain is effective and doesn't hurt too much. Most of the time, a directional fluoroscopy is used to show where to put the needle during the procedure. This makes it possible to get the steep craniocaudal angle needed for lumbar ESIs and L5 and S1 nerve root blocks (NRBs).

The interlaminar approach is a type of lumbar spinal injection in which a needle is put between the laminae of two adjacent vertebrae to inject medicine into the epidural space. This method is often used to treat a single level of the spine, but it can also be used to treat patients with multiple levels of spinal disease.

Positioning mistakes during interlaminar and transforaminal cervical injections can cause serious problems, according to hearsay. These mistakes can be less likely to happen if the needles are already bent. They also let the dorsal root ganglion be placed closer to the middle, which makes it easier to avoid puncturing a radicular artery by accident.