How Much Could a Steroid Injection Increase Settlement on Your Herniated Disc Case?

If you were injured due to another party’s negligence, such as due to a slip and fall or a trip and fall, you may have needed medical attention and care. It can often take months to recover. You may still be suffering from your injuries. In some cases, steroid injections are used as part of the treatment for injuries like herniated discs.

Below, you will learn more about these types of injuries, how epidural steroid injections could help, and how their use could potentially increase your settlement amount. Your Brooklyn slip and fall lawyer may be able to shed more light on the matter, especially on how other factors can affect your slip and fall settlement amount. First, it is important to understand the nature of these types of injuries and how steroid injections can affect them.

What Is a Herniated Disc?

Between the 24 vertebrae that make up the spine are discs, which are round, rubbery cushions that are meant to provide shock absorption. They are filled with a gel-like fluid and are what allow a person to twist and bend. When the back is injured in a car accident or otherwise, these discs can swell or slip. The swelling can irritate the nearby nerves. This is what causes pain. In some cases, the pain might be annoying but tolerable. Other times, it can be chronic and excruciating.

Regardless of the amount of pain a person feels, they deserve compensation for their injuries. When they need to have steroid injections to help with the pain, it typically means that the injury is more severe and will take longer to heal—if it can heal entirely. The severity of the injury and the requirement for steroid injections could affect the settlement amount for certain cases.

Types of Treatment Options Often Used for Herniated Discs

The severity of herniated disc injuries and the pain they entail vary considerably from one person to another. Many people have herniations and don’t know it, while others are in serious pain each day. It often depends on the amount of damage that has been done. Because of the variation, it means that there are several options when it comes to treatment. Below are some of the most commonly used treatment options.

In some cases, the doctor may want to treat the injury conservatively. In these cases, they will generally provide patients with a course of anti-inflammatory drugs. Patients might also be using over-the-counter medications to help with inflammation and pain management. Medication will generally be provided along with physical therapy or even chiropractic therapy.  

When that type of treatment doesn’t work, they may then refer the patient to a physician specializing in pain management.  That doctor prescribes steroid injections to help reduce pain and swelling caused by the herniation.

The goal is to allow the body to heal over time. However, that may not always be possible. When the above treatments don’t work, the doctors may decide that surgery is the best option. The surgery could be minimally invasive, or it could be larger and more complicated open-back surgery. Again, all cases and injuries are different.

How Are Steroid Injections Used?

Steroid injections are an anti-inflammatory medicine that can be used for a wide range of health conditions and injuries, including spinal pain after a car accident. The steroids are used to reduce inflammation in the part of the body where they’ve been injected. In the case of a herniated disc, the injection is made at the site of the epidural space. This is the outermost part of the spinal column. It is supposed to help relieve pain by taking pressure off of the areas of the spine that were affected.

Instead, they help to reduce the amount of pain you are feeling. Patients may receive just one injection, or they may receive several as part of their treatment.

Typically, the pain relief provided by steroid injections can last for six to eight weeks. Although, it can last for as long as six months in some instances. These types of injections can help more than herniated discs. They are sometimes used for sciatica and spinal stenosis, as well.

For many patients, pain relief can help to make the injury more bearable for a time. However, it is important to keep in mind that steroid injections are not used as a means to heal the injury. This means that if the underlying cause of the injury is not taken care of, the pain could return time and again.

Additionally, you can’t continually get these types of injections. It is recommended that you should not have any more than three to six injections per year. The number a patient can receive will depend on their doctor and their injury.

Common Types of Steroid Injections

Below, we’ll look at some of the ways that steroid injections are administered

The most common, which we discussed above, is an injection into the epidural space. This is known as an interlaminar epidural injection. While this is the method that tends to be used most often, it is not the only place where the injections might occur.

Other times, the injections will be into nerve blocks. The doctor will inject a local anesthetic and steroid into the location where the spinal nerves are located. It is known as a transforaminal epidural injection.

Finally, there are caudal epidural injections, but this doesn’t usually happen until after a patient has undergone back surgery that didn’t provide the patient with the help and pain relief they need. These require an injection of the steroid through the sacral hiatus into the epidural space.

What Are Trigger Point Injections?

Epidural steroid injections are not the only way steroids are used to treat injuries. Trigger point injections could also help with inflammation, as well as muscle relief. The trigger points are knots that develop either in the muscles or the fascia tissue, and they can cause chronic pain. As the name suggests, these types of injections are made right into the trigger points. Some who have suffered a neck injury in a car accident might receive these types of injections, for example. Again, they can help to manage pain while the body begins to heal, or while you are waiting for other types of treatment to treat the underlying cause.

What Are the Risks of Steroid Injections

Although steroid injections can provide pain relief, there are downsides to them. The injections are costly, for starters. While they are minimally invasive, they also have some potential risks including feeling flushed, increased blood sugar levels, insomnia, bleeding disorders, and pain at the injection site. Some patients may even become allergic to the medication. These issues are rare, but they do happen.

Could Steroid Injections Truly Increase Your Settlement Amount?

When someone has suffered a back injury and a herniated disc, there is the potential that the settlement amount could increase if steroid injections have been used. This is because it is seen as a more complicated or severe injury that other methods of treatment did not help. Therefore, the awards from juries tend to be a lot higher, as do settlement amounts if the other party doesn’t want to go to court.

What If You Need Surgery?

While it is true that steroid injections can increase the settlement, surgery will increase the amount even more. Surgery means that neither conservative treatments nor injections worked to relieve the pain and allow the back to heal. These cases, because they often involve more pain and suffering, along with the surgery, tend to net a higher settlement.

However, that doesn’t mean that someone who has been injured should automatically try to get surgery if the other options might work. Instead, they should work with the doctors to make sure they are getting the best possible treatment to heal their back without surgery. If surgery turns out to be the only option, though, you may want to talk with your lawyer about delaying the resolution of your case until the surgery has been done.

There Is No Average Amount

One of the most important things that you need to take away from this article is that even though your settlement could be higher if you’ve had steroid injections for your injury, there’s no average amount for a settlement. All cases, injuries, treatments, and outcomes are different. All settlement offers and juries are different. You can’t just assume that you are going to get a six-figure settlement—or more—because you had steroid injections.

However, the settlement will be higher than if you only needed OTC meds and physical therapy or chiropractic care. Just how much higher? The only way to know for sure is to move forward with your case with a good lawyer on your side. Of course, you have to remember that even the attorneys will not be able to provide you with a dollar amount for your settlement. It will all depend on the circumstances of your case and how it plays out between the parties involved when you negotiate or end up going to trial.

Talk with an Experienced Attorney Today

What should you do if you have been injured because of the negligence of another, and you have been treated using steroid injections? The first step is to get in touch with an attorney as soon as possible. You never want to talk with the other party’s attorney or insurance company. Often, those insurance companies will offer a lowball amount just to take care of the case as quickly as possible. Though it might be tempting, you never want to settle for less than you truly deserve for your injuries.

When you are looking for an attorney to help you, check to see what types of cases they have worked on in the past, along with the outcomes of those cases. You need to have someone who is experienced in cases like yours that include steroid injections. This doesn’t mean that you are going to necessarily get a high settlement, but it does mean they know that the injections could play a role in what you receive.

At Kucher Law Group, we may be able to assist you in filing a claim for your injuries and securing the maximum possible compensation in your case. Our experienced New York personal injury attorneys are here to help. Contact us today to schedule a consultation at (929) 274-8000.

from Kucher Law https://www.rrklawgroup.com/how-much-could-a-steroid-injection-increase-settlement-on-your-herniated-disc-case/