Fluoroscopy-guided Joint Injections & Aspirations

Fluoroscopic-guided injections are safe and effective diagnostic and therapeutic procedures that can help your doctor determine the source of pain or discomfort in and around a joint.

Most commonly this procedure is performed to treat pain associated with arthritis, but can also be used to provide important diagnostic information about your joint, including the presence of infection.

Your radiologist will use a fluoroscope, which is an x-ray tube, to provide real-time imaging of the joint to be injected. After sterilizing your skin, your radiologist will create a numb track from the skin to the joint so that a needle may be painlessly advanced into the joint.

Then with the use of the fluoroscope, the radiologist will guide a small needle into your joint. Once in place, the physician can administer a mixture of steroids and anesthetics for pain relief, or obtain joint fluid for further testing.

The procedure is extremely safe and very effective. If your joint was injected with anesthetics and steroids, you will be instructed not to stress the joint for the next 6-12 hours. Afterwards, you can return to normal activities. The medicines injected contain both fast and slow acting agents. Therefore, it usually takes a few days to determine the amount of pain relief you will experience.

Most individuals can expect approximately 3 months of relief although individual results are extremely variable. Your referring physician will usually limit the number of injections to three per year. Side effects are extremely rare but include infection, an allergic reaction to any of the medications used, as well as a small amount of bleeding.

Our patients tolerate the procedure very well and often experience complete relief of symptoms.

Radiologic Tests

The American College of Radiology (ACR) and the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) provide descriptions of various procedures relating to the Musculoskeletal (MSK) System on their jointly developed site, RadiologyInfo.org .