At the base of the spine is the tailbone (the sacrum). The sacroiliac joint connects the sacrum to the pelvis. It can become a source of lower back and leg pain. An injection into the sacroiliac joint can provide relief from pain.
The sacroiliac joint is in the back of the pelvis, between the sacrum (tailbone) and the ilium, which forms the lateral part of your pelvis. It helps transfer weight from the upper body to the legs. Its movement helps give one a graceful walk. It is vulnerable to injury from actions like stepping into a hole while running or having your foot pressed down on the car brake as hard as you can when you see that someone is about to rear-end you. In both these instances, the SI joint is subjected to a shearing force, where the leg and the rest of the body go in opposing directions. When one or both of these joints become irritated or injured, they can cause chronic discomfort and pain. SI joint injections can accurately pinpoint and alleviate this pain, guided by fluoroscopy (x-ray imaging).
The SI joint injection enables physicians to confirm that irritation or damage to the SI joint is the source of your symptoms. This precise diagnostic tool is also a therapeutic procedure, offering significant pain relief. The sacroiliac joint is easily injected. If these injections do not relieve the pain, we can proceed to disrupt the nerve supply to the joint using radiofrequency. A new technique, cooled radiofrequency ablation, allows the safe, effective treatment of sacroiliac joint pain.
