When you have sharp, excruciating pain in a knotted muscle, you may benefit from a trigger point injection for quick relief. Interventional pain specialist Jessen Mukalel, MD, in The Woodlands, Texas, recommends trigger point injections in conjunction with other, more holistic and supportive therapies that heal the underlying tissue damage. For quick relief from knotted muscles and referred pain, contact the office by phone or online today.
A trigger point is a painful, bumpy area of muscle that may feel like a small, tight knot. You may develop a trigger point because of an acute injury, such as a sports injury, that heals incompletely. You can also develop trigger points from repetitive motions that stress your muscle fibers, causing microtrauma.
The pain from trigger points can prevent you from using your affected muscle. Trigger point pain can also radiate to other areas of your body, causing a condition known as referred pain.
Trigger point injections are used to treat and relax trigger points. Dr. Mukalel administers trigger point injections directly into muscle knots. Trigger point injections may contain one or more of the following:
Trigger point injections work quickly to alleviate pain and may help the affected muscle relax.
Dr. Mukalel administers trigger point injections to relieve a range of pain conditions, including referred pain. You may benefit from trigger point injections to improve pain from:
Trigger point injections only take a few minutes. You can treat multiple trigger points in one session.
Trigger point injections can be an effective way to manage acute pain or flares of pain caused by trigger points. However, trigger point injections don’t heal the underlying source of pain, which is tissue damage or incomplete healing. Dr. Mukalel may recommend platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections to stimulate tissue healing in addition to or instead of trigger point injections.
Many traditional providers misdiagnose trigger points as being primarily a knotted muscle that needs to be relaxed. Instead, Dr. Mukalel has found that pain caused by so-called trigger points is actually a result of other conditions that respond to different therapies. For example, a muscle-tendon problem can be treated with ultrasound-guided PRP injections, and a facet joint signaling problem can be treated with radiofrequency ablation. Intrinsic muscle dystonia may be successfully treated with Botox® injections.
To get relief from trigger point pain, contact Jessen Mukalel, MD, by phone or online today.