Trigger Point Injections

What are trigger points?

Trigger points are painful areas of knotted muscle fibers. They cause nerve irritation, inflammation, and pain that radiates outward from the trigger point’s center.

Trigger points develop for a variety of reasons including:

• Trauma
• Postural abnormalities
• Bony abnormalities

A common cause of trigger points is muscle compression caused by external forces, for example when you have back pain.

Trigger points often improve with physical and massage therapies, but when they’re causing chronic pain problems, trigger point injections at Southeast Center for Headaches can provide relief.

What are trigger point injections?

Trigger point injections contain a combination of pain-relieving and anti-inflammatory medications, most often lidocaine and steroids.

Your expert provider at Southeast Center for Headaches injects this medication into specific trigger points to ease the pain and reduce inflammation affecting the:

• Temporalis (side of the head)
• Occipitalis (back of the skull)
• Posterior cervical (back of the neck)
• Trapezius (shoulder blade)

These muscles are the ones that are often responsible for chronic head and neck pain.

What is the trigger point injection procedure like?

Your provider at Southeast Center for Headaches is an expert in administering trigger point injections. The procedure is an in-office process, and you don’t need to make any special preparations.

The trigger point treatment session takes only a few minutes. Your provider uses a fine-gauge needle to perform the injection and takes every care to make the procedure as comfortable as possible.

Some patients do experience mild discomfort, but this is typically minimal and short-lived. If you have concerns about your comfort, you can use an anesthetic cream to numb your skin beforehand.

You might need several trigger point injections in your treatment session, but your provider goes through all the details with you before beginning so you know what to expect. After the injections, your provider might also recommend heat therapy and ice therapy as complementary treatments.

After your trigger point injections, you can go back to school or work, but shouldn’t do anything overly energetic for the first few days. You might have some soreness at the trigger point injection sites, but this should fade within 48 hours.

How soon do trigger point injections start to work?

As trigger point injections contain an anesthetic, you should experience almost immediate relief from pain. The steroids in the trigger point injections are longer acting, helping reduce inflammation for a more extended period.

Every patient’s response to trigger point injections is different, so you might feel the benefits for a few days, weeks, or possibly months. If necessary, you can have another course of trigger point injections every four to eight weeks.

Call the Southeast Center for Headaches today to find out more or book an appointment online.