Facet Joint Injections

Treatment and diagnosis of chronic back pain is a challenge that faces nearly all medical practitioners at sometime. While back pain syndromes are far from completely understood, pathology and inflammation involving the facet joints do play a role in pain generation in some patients with both chronic and acute back pain. Familiarity with the facet joints as pain generators and with injection techniques and blocks is critically important to the practicing spine interventionist. Imaging studies are frequently inconclusive, and the diagnosis of facet joint syndrome may be made only by the response to a carefully performed facet joint block. The spine interventionist and injection techniques also play a critical role in pain management for many of these patients.