Steroid Injections DON'T work for Back and Leg Pain

Afrik Update

HEALTH

By Dailymail

                     

Having steroid injections to ease back pain could be a waste of time, after researchers found they do little to alleviate sciatica.

The condition, which is a common form of leg and back pain, is caused when the sciatic nerve becomes compressed. This is most usually caused by a slipped disc.

'I think it's pretty clear that this treatment is not good to do,' said Chris Maher, of The George Institute for Global Health in Sydney, Australia, who worked on the study.

Yet the use of epidural steroid injections to treat back pain of all sorts among Medicare patients nearly doubled from 741,000 in 2000 to about 1,438,000 in 2004, according to the researchers.