Salt jab not 'a miracle cure' for back pain

Conclusion This review primarily aimed to look at whether the epidural saline injections that are used as an inactive “control” in trials of epidural steroid injections might actually themselves have a beneficial effect on back pain. To do this it compared their effect against another commonly used inactive “control” – non-epidural (intramuscular) injections of either steroid or saline. An effective non-steroidal type of injection would be welcome as steroid injections can only be given on an infrequent basis due to the risk of side effects. The treatment is also not suitable for some groups of patients, such as those with liver disease. Sadly the results of this study do not show that saline injections are an effective alternative to current treatments. The main findings were that: Only three small studies were available that had directly compared epidural saline injections with non-epidural injections. These studies found no difference between these two treatments. Trials of epidural steroid injections using epidural non-steroid (saline) injections as a control were less likely to show an effect of the epidural steroid injections on back pain than trials using non-epidural (intramuscular) injections as a control. In indirect meta-analysis epidural saline injections appeared to be more effective than non-epidural injections (either non-epidural saline or steroid). This provides some evidence that what have been considered to be “placebo” epidur...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Medication Medical practice Source Type: news