Possilbe pain relief for facet joints?

See below: The first thing that i usually recommend is physical therapy. This helps in about 6-7/10 cases. When this does not help, there are various interventional procedures for facet joint pain. One is called medial branch radiofrequency treatment which treats the nerves to these joints. They can often provide relief for a year or more but i still like to see people be consistent with exercise.

Injections: One can have facet joint injections with steroid and local anesthetic. If this helps for even a short time then radiofrequency neurotomy will likely help long term. http://www.swarmwebhosting.com/ans/piedmont/sp_radioneurot.html.

Options: Radiofrequency procedures work well if a previous facet injection or medial branch block was performed with greater than 75-80% relief that was obtained. As with anything there are failures, but quite low if the block worked well. Risks are the same as with any spine procedure, no different. Rare that you would be worse off afterwards.