Do saline injections have a placebo effect or do they really work against back pain? It was by questioning the value of steroid injections that researchers from the John Hopkins University School of Medicine in the United States compared the different epidural steroid injections to other types of non-steroidal epidural injections (saline ) and non-epidural (intramuscular).
For a long time back pain was treated with epidural steroid injections. But some studies have questioned the validity of their use. If their effectiveness is estimated at 60% of cases, we do not really know if they provide real relief in the long term and prevent surgery.
Treatments with fewer side effects
In addition, in some patients steroid injections are not so benign as they can increase blood sugar levels in diabetics. In older women, steroids have been associated with an increased risk of bone disease.
Faced with these drawbacks, the anesthesiologist Steven Cohen and his colleagues checked whether treatments less restrictive than steroids could work. They looked at 43 studies conducted in October 2012 based on 3641 patient medical records. They concluded that steroid injections were overall as effective as saline or intramuscular injections. In other words, another liquid such as saline would have the same effect as steroids. “Epidural injection of any fluid is as effective as any intramuscular injection,” the authors explained. “This shows that most of us can relieve their lower back pain with anything other than steroids “.
