Journal of Spine

The Importance of Image Guidance during Epidural Injections: Rates of Incorrect Needle Placement during Non-Image Guided Epidural Injections

Abstract

  Joshua H. Levin, Ryan Wetzel and Matthew W. Smuck

Background: Epidural steroid injections are commonly-performed procedures used to treat several spinal conditions. Traditionally, these procedures have been performed without image guidance. However, a large number of blindly-performed injections are inaccurate with needle placement outside the epidural space. The purpose of the current article was to review the data on inaccuracy rates of non-image guided epidural injections.

Results and Conclusions: 9-52% of non-image guided caudal epidural injections are outside the epidural space. 7-30% on non-image guided lumbar interlaminar epidural injections is outside the epidural space.