A widely used method of treating a common cause of back and leg pain — steroid injections for spinal stenosis — may provide little benefit for many patients, according to a new study that experts said should make doctors and patients think twice about the treatment.
Hundreds of thousands of injections are given for stenosis each year in the United States, experts say, costing hundreds of millions of dollars.
But the study, the largest randomized trial evaluating the treatment, found that patients receiving a standard stenosis injection — which combine a steroid and a local anesthetic — had no less pain and virtually no greater function after six weeks than patients injected with anesthetic alone. The research, involving 400 patients at 16 sites, was published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine.
"Certainly there are more injections than actually should happen," said Dr. Gunnar Andersson, the chairman emeritus of orthopedic surgery at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, who was not involved in the research. "It's sort of become the thing you do. You see this abnormality on the M.R.I. and the patient complains, and immediately, you send the patient for an epidural injection."
Some people can still benefit from injections, he said, but now physicians "will be more cautious" and patients should ask, "Should I really do this?' "
Mostly, steroid injections are safe, carrying small risks of infection, headaches and sleeplessness. But in April, the Food and Drug Administration warned that they may, in rare cases, cause blindness, stroke, paralysis or death, noting that injections have not been F.D.A.-approved for back pain and their effectiveness has "not been established."
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