Cortisone injections: a second look

Last October I wrote a post about cortisone injections. I wrote about it because unrelenting pain in my left hip prompted me to see an orthopedic surgeon. I thought I might need a hip replacement. But the pain was from bursitis, not arthritis. The doctor gave me a cortisone shot at the site of the bursitis. When I wrote the post, I was disappointed in the results. After a few weeks, the pain came back—probably because I’d overdone physical activity too soon after the injection. A few weeks after that the pain receded again and now, over two years later, my hip is pain free.

Last May, I had another injection—this time in my right knee. For the past seven or eight months, bending my knee had been painful—although walking didn’t hurt. So I lived with it, but then it kept getting worse. My range of motion kept getting smaller. Not knowing the cause was driving me crazy, so I had an MRI. (My chiropractor said that my lower leg bones were misaligned with my thigh bone, which may be true.) The MRI showed torn cartilage and lots of fluid in and around me knee. So I got another cortisone shot.

The shot was not to dull the pain, but to reduce the inflammation that was causing the fluid build-up, which was the source of the pain. Bending my knee forced the fluid up and down my leg. Cortisone is a powerful anti-inflammatory drug. Supposedly, reducing the inflammation would also cause the fluid to subside, which, apparently it has. My knee is much better.

Those of you who follow my posts know that I resist medical treatments (I don’t have annual checkups, for example). But I do seek medical help if I’ve got a problem. So now I’m all for cortisone shots if needed. But too many injections over a short period of time can cause damage to the tendons, ligaments, and cartilage at the injection site. Also, studies have shown that giving cortisone shots to people with tendinitis, such as tennis elbow, makes them worse off than doing nothing. The shots impede healing and can put you higher risk for continuing damage. It turns out that this type of tendinitis is not from inflammation but from tears in the tendon.

So be careful.

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