How Often Should I Get Joint Injections for Knee Pain?

There’s nothing like knee pain to cast a long shadow over your everyday life. Given how integral your knees are to moving around, knee pain can certainly limit your life in significant ways.

As orthopedic experts, the team here at Los Angeles Orthopedic Surgery Specialists understands the many benefits of joint injections for reestablishing pain-free movement. When it comes to knees, these injections are a powerful tool in our kit and often our frontline treatment for helping patients find relief.

Here’s a look at the different types of knee injections we offer and how often you might need them for optimal benefits.

Corticosteroid injections for pain prelief

No matter what’s driving your knee issues, the odds are good that your pain is linked to inflammation inside your knee. One of the best remedies for knee pain and inflammation is a corticosteroid injection, which contains both a local anesthetic and a steroid. The anesthetic goes to work immediately to relieve your pain, while the steroid tackles the inflammation for longer-term relief.

The injections are quick and easy and buy you some time so you can implement other therapies that benefit your knees, namely physical therapy.

As for how often you should get corticosteroid injections, the answer varies from one person to the next. Some people experience relief for a few weeks while others feel the effects for six months or more.

Restoring lubrication for pain-free movement

Another type of injection we use is hyaluronic acid (HA). The goal of this injection is to improve the lubrication within the knee using HA, a substance that’s naturally found in your body. HA is not only a natural lubricant, it also retains water, which helps to relieve the friction in your knee that’s leading to pain and inflammation.

We administer the HA in a series of 3-4 rounds of injections, which we space apart by several weeks. After your final round of HA, it typically takes up to two weeks for the treatment to take full effect. 

Most of our patients benefit from many months of relief with HA injections and these results often last longer than corticosteroid injections. Here again, it’s important to use this time to beef up the muscles surrounding your knees for more sustainable pain relief.

Rebuilding your knees with regenerative injections

One of the biggest drivers of knee pain is osteoarthritis (OA), which affects more than 32.5 million people in the United states. With OA, the cartilage inside your knee breaks down, and since this tissue doesn’t have blood vessels, it doesn’t regenerate.

With regenerative injections, including platelet-rich plasma and stem cell injections, our goal is to rebuild the tissues in your knee. Not only can we aim to repair your joints with these injections, they also work to curb inflammation to bring you pain relief.

In most cases, you need a series of injections, and then we allow time for your joints to respond. As for when you might need another round of injections, this depends on the extent of the tissue damage and how much you use your knees in the interim.

Ultimately, if you’re looking for a precise schedule for knee injections, that’s difficult for us to predict here, as each of our patients responds differently. We can say that these injections are fantastic for getting you back to your active life without knee pain getting in the way.

To figure out which knee injections are right for you, call one of our offices around Los Angeles, California. We have offices in Glendale, Wilshire, East LA, Santa Fe Springs, Pico Rivera, Encino, Newhall, Montebello, and Tarzana. You can also schedule an appointment online for a consultation.