FDA warning on epidural steroid injections.

Epidural steroid injections are popular for persistent neck and back pains. Patients with migraine and other headaches often have neck pain as well and if they happen to visit an anesthesiologist/pain specialist instead of a neurologist, there is a good chance they will be offered a cervical epidural steroid injection. If you or someone you know are offered such injections, just say no.

Despite the widespread use of this procedure, there is no good scientific evidence that these injections help. Not only they probably do not help, they can cause serious side effects. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning that injection of corticosteroids into the epidural space of the spine may result in rare but serious adverse events, including loss of vision, stroke, paralysis, and death.

The FDA is requiring the addition of a warning to the drug labels of injectable corticosteroids to describe these risks.

The FDA said that “Injectable corticosteroids are commonly used to reduce swelling or inflammation. Injecting corticosteroids into the epidural space of the spine has been a widespread practice for many decades; however, the effectiveness and safety of the drugs for this use have not been established, and the FDA has not approved corticosteroids for such use.”

The FDA reviewed cases of serious neurological adverse events associated with epidural corticosteroid injections. Serious adverse events included death, spinal cord infarction, paraplegia, quadriplegia, cortical blindness, stroke, seizures, nerve injury, and brain edema.

Some doctors perform these injections under X-ray guidance, but even then serious neurological complications can occur. X-ray guidance also exposes patients to harmful radiation and increases the cost of the procedure, which is significant even without the X-ray.

This FDA warning is unrelated to a recent disastrous contamination of corticosteroids used for epidural injections. This contamination occurred at a compounding pharmacy in Massachusetts and resulted in 749 patients contracting fungal meningitis with 61 patients dying from it. This is another reason to avoid epidurals.