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No Standardized approach for back pain with epidural steroid injections

No Standardized approach for back pain with epidural steroid injections Researchers from University of California at San Diego have reported at the American Academy of Pain Medicine’s 25th Annual Meeting that there is a lack of standardized practices existing for administering an epidural steroid injection for back pain.

The researchers considered many factors such as: which steroids were administered, whether or not a local anesthetic was mixed with the steroid, and the amount of steroid used.

From News-Medical.Net:

“Epidural steroid injections are an important and common option for the treatment of back pain. However, we found that a great variety of techniques are being used. There is no gold standard,” said Dr. Patel, lead author of the study and resident at the University of California at San Diego. “Guidelines may need to be explored with regard to this procedure to increase the effectiveness and decrease risk when using this approach to treat pain.”

Dr. Patel’s study found there were differences from institution to institution regarding which steroid was preferred for these injections. The most common steroids identified for this procedure and respective dose ranges were: depomedrol (dose range 40-120 mg), celestone (dose range 6-15 mg), decadron (dose range 4-12 mg), and kenalog (dose range 10-80 mg).

Yogesh Patel, MD, and his colleagues at UCSD, remarked that these technique variations can possible give an insight as to how and why some patients get better results from ESI than others and suggested that this fact needs to be explored further.