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Sciatica

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Spinal steroid shots may have little effect on sciatica

Despite the growing popularity of steroid injections to treat various kinds of back pain in recent years, a new review of past research finds the shots do little to alleviate sciatica, a common condition that causes leg and back pain.Analyzing results from nearly two dozen clinical trials on thousands of patients, Australian researchers found that epidural injections (into the spine) of corticosteroids had no long- or short-term effect on sciatica back pain, and such a small short-term effect on leg pain it would make no difference to the patient."I think it's pretty clear that this treatment is not good to do," said Chris Maher, of The George Institute for Global Health in Sydney, Australia, who worked on the study.Nonetheless, the use of epidural steroid injections to treat back pain of all sorts among Medicare patients nearly doubled from 741,000 in 2000 to about 1,438,000 in 2004, according to the researchers.In the U.S., the cost of one shot can be several hundred dollars.And a ta...

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