What are lumbar facet joints and why are facet joint injections helpful?
Lumbar facet joints are small joints a little larger than the size of the thumbnails located in pairs in the back of the spine. They provide stability and guide motion in the low back. If the joints become painful they may cause pain in the low back, abdomen, buttocks, groin or legs. A facet joint injection serves several purposes. First, by placing numbing medicine into the joint or around the nerves surrounding the joint, the amount of immediate pain relief experienced will help confirm or deny the joint as a source of pain. Additionally, the temporary relief of the numbing medicine may better allow a physical therapist to treat that joint. What happens during the procedure? The patients are placed on the X-ray table on their stomach in such a way that the physician can best visualize these joints in the back using x-ray guidance. The skin on the low back is cleansed using a sterile solution called Betadine. Next, the physician injects a small area of skin with numbing medicine. This
