The sacroiliac joint is a large joint in the region of your low back and buttocks. When the joint becomes painful it can cause pain in its immediate region or it can refer pain into your groin, abdomen, or leg.
A sacroiliac joint injection serves several purposes. First, by placing numbing medicine into the joint, the amount of immediate pain relief you experience will help confirm or deny the joint as a source of your pain. Additionally, the temporary pain relief of the numbing medicine may better allow a physical therapist or chiropractor to treat the joint. Also, time release Triamcinolone will serve to reduce any presumed inflammation within your joint and further assist the physical therapist or chiropractor, if necessary. It is possible to obtain relief from the injection alone without follow-up physical therapy or chiropractic care. This may have to be repeated from time to time. In many patients, we may have to interrupt the nerve supply to the sacroiliac joint to provide any long lasting relief.
We always include an injection of the Piriformis muscle and Trochanteric bursa at the same time. It is the only muscle that attaches to both sides of the joint and stretches across the Sciatic nerve. If it moves, it aggravates the muscle then in turn causes Sciatica. (Not to be confused with leg pain from a disk impinging a nerve.) All muscles in the buttock area (nine muscles) eventually attach to the Greater Trochanter on the side of the hip. With gait disturbance, the tendinous ends of the muscle are irritated, and the bursa (lubricating sac) is stressed to the point of failure leading to inflammation, (bursitis).