• Effectiveness

  None (for degenerative disc disease)
• Effectiveness

  None (for sciatic neuralgia)
• Effectiveness

  None (for herniated disc)
• Side effects

  None (for Overall)
• Adherence

  Always
• Burden

  Not at all hard to take

Dosage: 60 mg Every Other Week

Advice & Tips: According to the literautre the efficacy of epidural steroid injections for the treatment of herniated disc disorder is questionable. However, I personally know several people who greatly benefited from such injections. In fact, their problem is yet to return, and it was many years ago. Therefore I believe that these injections are worth trying, despite the fact that I received 4 injections by more than 1 Dr and had no pain relief whatsoever. The point for the patient to evaluate before scheduling such injections is to verify that the dose of the steroid that the Dr wants to injects is not lowered after each injection, and that it is constantly high. There was one clinic that wanted to inject decreasing doses of steroids and I left this clinic to do other injections with a different Dr. I also think that if these inejctions do not help for sciatic pain and the pain is intractable, it is time to start searching for a surgeon. One additional point regarding epidural steroid injections is that I think that it is worth trying 3 injections. So if you don't have any benefit from the first 2 injections, it is still worth trying at least 1 additional injection.

Cost: $200+ monthly