KTIV NewsChannel 4 Sioux City IA: News, Weather and SportsImage-guided injections

Image-guided injections

When a joint hurts there are a lot of therapies doctors can use to get you feeling better. One is an injection of a steroid or maybe lidocaine. To get that medicine in just the right spot, doctors often have to feel around the joint. But now, a better alternative that let's them see exactly where the needle is going.

Dr. Michael McHenry is using an ultra-sound image to guide him in giving an injection. It's a new way to give doctors a better idea of what they're doing in procedures they can't see with the naked eye. "It's really a blinded-procedure. We anatomically know, pretty much, where we're going, but we don't have any surety that we're getting exactly into the joint," said Dr. Michael McHenry.

But now... image-guided injections. "It's just like anything, if you're driving on the road you like to see the road," said Dr. McHenry. Using either ultra-sound or fluoroscopy, doctors can see the tendons, blood vessels, and muscles inside any part of the body they may be dealing with... from the wrist to the ankle... and even the spine. "In certain joints, it is much; you have a greater success rate with doing it with the image-guided," said Dr. McHenry. Dr. McHenry is a physiatrist at CNOS in Dakota Dunes. He says his office has started using the image-guided procedures more and more over the last few months.