It's safe to take everyday painkillers such as paracetamol or ibuprofen. With hydrocortisone injections, the medicine is placed directly into the painful or swollen joint. It does not travel through the rest of your body. That means, it's less likely to cause side effects. Sometimes, though, hydrocortisone from a joint injection can get into your blood. This is more likely to happen if you've had several injections.
If hydrocortisone gets into your blood, it can travel around your body and there's a very small chance that you may have a serious side effect. Some of these side effects, such as mood changes, can happen after a few days. Others, such as getting a rounder face, can happen weeks or months after treatment. In rare cases, if your child or teenager has hydrocortisone injections over many months or years, it can slow down their normal growth.
Your child's doctor will monitor their height and weight carefully for as long as they're having treatment with hydrocortisone. This will help them spot any slowing down of your child's growth and change their treatment if needed.
Even if your child's growth slows down, it does not seem to have much effect on their overall adult height. Talk to your doctor if you're worried. They will be able to explain the benefits and risks of giving your child hydrocortisone injections. It's extremely rare to have an allergic reaction anaphylaxis to a hydrocortisone injection. Your doctor will only prescribe hydrocortisone injections for you while you're pregnant or breastfeeding if the benefits of the medicine outweigh the chances of it being harmful.
Tell your doctor if you're trying to get pregnant or if you're already pregnant before having a hydrocortisone injection. It's safe to have hydrocortisone injections while you're breastfeeding. Only very small amounts of hydrocortisone get into breast milk, so it's unlikely to be harmful.
For more information about how hydrocortisone can affect you and your baby during pregnancy, read this leaflet on the Best Use of Medicines in Pregnancy BUMPs website. There are many medicines that can affect the way hydrocortisone injections work.
It's very important to check with your doctor or pharmacist that a medicine is safe to mix with hydrocortisone injections before you start having them. This includes prescription medicines and ones that you buy like paracetamol , ibuprofen and aspirin. It also includes herbal remedies and supplements. Tell your doctor or pharmacist if you're taking any other medicines, including herbal medicines, vitamins or supplements. Hydrocortisone injections contain the active ingredient hydrocortisone. This is a steroid or corticosteroid.
The injection releases the hydrocortisone slowly into the part of your body that is painful or swollen. Like other steroids, it works by calming down your immune system. This reduces inflammation and helps to relieve the pain and swelling. A hydrocortisone injection usually takes a few days to start working — although sometimes they work in just a few hours.
If your pain and swelling gets better after a single hydrocortisone injection, you may not need another one. If you have a long-term problem and hydrocortisone injections work well, you may carry on having them. Doctors usually recommend waiting at least 3 months before having another hydrocortisone injection in the same joint. The injection can be a little uncomfortable, but many people say they're not as bad as they thought they would be.
Hydrocortisone injections usually help with pain and swelling for around 2 months. They can also make movement easier. If you have a short-term joint injury, an injection will often help you start to move again so that your body can heal itself. For long-term joint pain, an injection should help for a few months, but you may need further injections. Hydrocortisone injections can sometimes affect your immune system, so you're more likely to catch infections such as flu , the common cold and chest infections.
Keep away from people with infectious diseases, especially chickenpox , shingles or measles. If you've never had these illnesses they could make you very ill. Tell your doctor straight away if you come into contact with someone who has chickenpox, shingles or measles. Your doctor may be able to prescribe a medicine to protect you. Before you have a vaccination, mention to the healthcare professional that you're taking a steroid.
It's possible that if you have a "live" vaccine around the time that you have a hydrocortisone injection, your immune system might not be strong enough to handle it. This could lead to you getting an infection. Inactive vaccinations, like the injected flu vaccine , are safe. If you need to have a live vaccine, check with the nurse or doctor that it's safe for you. If you have regular hydrocortisone injections, your doctor may give you a blue steroid card. Carry this with you all the time.
The card is the size of a credit card and fits into your wallet or purse. It gives advice on how you can reduce the risks of side effects. It also gives details of your doctor, how much hydrocortisone you're getting and how long your treatment will last for. Read Cortisone Injections Steroid Injections. Physicians typically recommend cortisone injections when inflammation causes joint pain, swelling, and warmth.
Painful joint inflammation is associated with several conditions, including but not limited to osteoarthritis , rheumatoid arthritis , gout , and tendonitis. Not all of these conditions produce enough inflammation to cause visible joint swelling or skin redness. For example, a joint affected by osteoarthritis has lost protective cartilage, which results in joint friction and can lead to painful inflammation, but the affected joint may not look much different than it normally does.
Cortisone can still be an effective treatment in these cases. Cortisone injections are generally used to treat just one painful joint at a time. Injections can deliver cortisone into the knee, hip, shoulder, spine, and other joints, including small joints in the hands.
Unlike treatments such as physical therapy, dietary changes, or weight loss, a cortisone injection can be given and take effect as soon as 24 hours. The fast-acting nature of cortisone makes it an option for people who need quick, temporary relief from arthritis joint pain. Treatment results vary If successful, an injection can relieve pain for several weeks or even several months, but keep in mind that results vary widely.
Your pain may not be relieved at all, or it may go away and never come back. Doctors are not sure why results vary and who will respond best. There are a few vital differences between the two pain treatments, but maybe the most significant is cortisone injections provide temporary relief, while PRP therapy reduces pain and heals the injured area. PRP treatment has healing properties that spur cellular growth and tissue regeneration, slowly rebuilding the painful area over time.
Cortisone shots merely mask the pain, albeit quicker than a PRP injection, but will do nothing to facilitate healing or repairs in the body. In fact, cortisone shots shut down healing altogether. Pain restricts movement, preventing further injury. The other concern with cortisone shots is they also prevent ligaments and joints from fully healing, resulting in the injury recurring several months down the road.
As mentioned earlier, physicians must limit the amount of cortisone shots a body can take due to the healing prevention and deterioration of ligaments, cartilage, and joints. Thinning of the skin can also result. The bioactive proteins in blood facilitate and manage healing too, meaning PRP provides both pain relief over time, and heals the damaged tissue in a two-birds-with-one-stone deal. The downside of PRP therapy is the pain relief comes, well, painfully slow.
By that point PRP treatments really shine.
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