Does epidural anesthesia hurt > help?

Yes: Epidural anesthesia can reduce surgery related comlpications and enhance post operative pain management.

Epidurals can help!: Definitely helps more than it hurts! epidurals can be wonderful to help with labor pain and provide safe anesthesia for c-sections. Epidural steroids can help a lot with back pain. Epidurals can also be great for orthopedic procedures on the hips or knees. The anesthesiologist will numb up the area well, so it should hurt very little to have an epidural put in. Definitely worth it!

It helps: Helps relieve pain during surgery. An epidural steroid injection can help with pain pain and "sciatica".

See below: The use of epidurals in anesthesia has proven to decrease the narcotics a patient requires for surgery, it also speeds their recovery time. It does involve the placement of a needle in the back, which can hurt a bit, but once done is painless.