Trigger Point Injections

When your muscles do not—or cannot—relax, they can knot up and cause pain. Trigger points are tender points in your muscles that can cause pain and muscle weakness. Often, they cause pain that shoots away from the muscle. Sometimes trigger points irritate the nerves, causing pain throughout your body. It can also result in muscle weakness.

At Mount Sinai, we can treat trigger point pain using simple injections directly into the muscle. Trigger point injections soothe muscle pain, take about 15 minutes, and can provide long-lasting relief.

Trigger point injections can improve the blood flow to your muscles and break the cycle of pain you experience.

The Process

For this treatment, you sit or lie down. Our doctor will press on your muscles to find the exact site. Then we clean the area and apply an anesthetic. Using a targeted approach, we insert a needle into your muscle of concern and use a specific needle motion to ensure that the muscle relaxes. After we feel the relaxation occur, we cool the area down with local anesthetic to reduce soreness and move on to your next painful muscle.  

Trigger point injections are safe. Complications and side effects are very rare, though you may experience temporary soreness at the injection spot. We do, however, advise avoiding strenuous activity for a few days after the injection, though.