The facet joints are the joints that are made up of the overlapping arches of the bones that make up your spinal canal. This is the portion that supports your back from one vertebral bone to the next. The facet joints are located in the entire spine, cervical, thoracic, and lumbar. Your sacrum, which is one solid bone, does not have a facet joint.

Arthritis of the facet joints can cause severe low back pain. Typical "facetogenic" pain is pain that stays in the center (axial) part of your cervical thoracic or lumbar spine with some radiation down the extremities, but typically not radiating into the hands or feet. The pain is normally increased when the spine is extended in the affected area.

Facet joint injection can be both a diagnostic and therapeutic procedure.

The technique of performing facet joint injections is as follows:

• You will be undressed and placed on the fluoroscopy (x-ray) table.

• The portion of the body over the facet joint block will be sterilely prepped and draped.

• Using the fluoroscopy, your facet joints will be identified and marked.

• Small, thin needles will be inserted into or adjacent to the facet joints after anesthetizing the skin over the facet  joints. Medication will then be injected into the facet joints.

After the procedure, you will be monitored in the recovery area. You should not engage in heavy activity the first day post procedure. The risks of the procedure are injection of medication into a spinal nerve resulting in numbness or  decreased function of the extremity for a short time; injection of medication into a blood vessel; bleeding; or the risk of  infection. Due to the highly skilled techniques employed by Lynne Carr Columbus, D.O., / Hee (Dennis) S. Lee, M.D. these risks are very minimal.

The purpose of facet joint injections is to decrease your pain and to help determine if it is the facet joints that are  causing your pain. These injections are often performed in conjunction with physical therapy to increase the efficacy of  your physical therapy. 

If you suffer from neck or back pain and have any questions regarding whether or not facet injections
may help your pain, please don't hesitate to contact the physicians at Gulf Coast Pain Management!