Pros and Cons of Steroid Injections for Arthritis

Regularly waking up with stiff and painful joints can motivate you to seek the latest arthritis treatments. If you’ve already consulted a medical professional, they may have mentioned steroid injections as an arthritis treatment option. But what makes cortisone injections effective, and are there any drawbacks to consider? 

At Naples Regenerative Institute in Naples, Florida, double board-certified interventional spine and pain specialist Glenn M. Flanagan, MD, lightens the burden of arthritis using advanced regenerative and inflammation-reducing therapies. He sometimes recommends low-dose cortisone injections to treat arthritis when other treatments haven’t reduced joint pain and stiffness. 

In this guide, we’ll review the pros and cons of using low-dose cortisone injections to treat arthritis. 

What is cortisone? 

Cortisone is a type of steroid. While steroid injections can reduce pain, cortisone isn’t a pain reliever. Instead, it’s a medication that reduces inflammation in the targeted area. You might feel less pain in that area as a result of the reduced inflammation. 

However, cortisone and other steroids don’t have any healing properties.

At Naples Regenerative Institute, Dr. Flanagan targets painful joints with low-dose steroid injections when arthritis doesn’t improve with other treatments. A lower dose of cortisone reduces your risk of experiencing side effects and complications from steroid injection therapy. 

Dr. Flanagan might use X-ray or ultrasound imaging to guide the injection into your painful joint. 

How steroids can improve arthritis

Steroid injections can offer some short-term benefits to people with arthritis, especially when other conservative treatments haven’t sufficiently reduced pain. Low-dose cortisone injections are safer and can still start a chain reaction that helps improve pain and function, which includes:

• Reducing inflammation
• Reducing pain
• Improving joint mobility
• Extending the joint’s range of motion

As a result of using steroid injections to treat arthritis, you might be able to participate in physical therapy and rehabilitation with greater ease. 

Risks and side effects to consider

Although cortisone injections effectively reduce arthritis inflammation, they’re rarely a first-line treatment because of the potential risks and side effects. Long-term treatment with steroids, or high-dose steroid injections, can increase your risk of: 

• Muscle atrophy (wasting or thinning)
• Bone necrosis (death)
• Tendon and ligament tears
• Cartilage loss

These complications happen because cortisone can be toxic to tissues, resulting in cell death. Fortunately, low-dose steroid injections chosen by Dr. Flanagan reduce these risks because they’re less potent. Additionally, the pain relief you feel is somewhat of a trick, because the problem is not fixed although may feel better. Continued activity after steroids may further damage the area over time. Steroids are a temporary “band-aid” not a “fix.” 

Deciding on your best treatment for arthritis

Although reducing inflammation with steroids can help reduce pain, inflammation is an important indicator of your body’s healing process. 

For this reason, Dr. Flanagan prefers treatments that boost the healing process. To treat your arthritis, he might recommend: 

• Different therapies, stretching, and exercise 
• Heat
• Multiwave Locked System (MLS) laser therapy 
• Viscosupplementation
• Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections

These treatments boost the healing process and don’t come with the risks of steroid injections.  

To find out if you can benefit from cortisone injections for arthritis, all Naples Regenerative Institute or request an appointment online today.