Types of Injections

Botulinum toxin injections have been shown to be safe and well tolerated in many clinical settings. In a pain management setting, these injections are usually considered after more traditional measures have failed. The exception to this is in the treatment of cervical dystonia, in which botulinum toxin injections are considered a first line treatment.

Diagnostic injections are injections designed to better understand your pain generator. This typically is an anesthetic agent like lidocaine injected to block pain-sensing nerves in a specific structure guided by imaging (x-ray and/or ultrasound). Other diagnostic injections use contrast, a special dye, used to assess the integrity of different structures and if they are pain generators.

Spinal injections are commonly used to localize and treat painful tissues in the cervical, thoracic and lumbosacral spine. Treatment with spinal injections and the type of injections differ among individual patients. The spinal specialists at Virginia Spine Institute rely on a thorough patient history combined with a physical exam and appropriate imaging studies and diagnostic tests in order to determine if an injection is warranted.