Hydrocortisone injections

• If you have diabetes and monitor your own blood sugar, you will need to do this more often. Hydrocortisone injections can affect your blood sugar control.

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How and When to take the injection ?

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• If the injection is for pain, it may contain a local anesthetic.

• You can go home after the injection but you may need to rest the area that was treated for a few days.

• You can have a hydrocortisone injection into the same joint up to 3 times in a year.

• If you have arthritis, this type of treatment is only used when just a few joints are affected. Usually, no more than 3 joints are injected at a time.

• The dose of hydrocortisone injected depends on the size of the joint. It can vary between 5mg and 50mg of hydrocortisone.

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Will the dose I have go up or down?

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• The amount of hydrocortisone in the injection could go up or down in future. It depends on how well the previous injection worked, how long the benefits lasted and whether you had any side effects.

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Side effects

 

• Most people don’t have any side effects after a hydrocortisone injection.

• Side effects are less likely if only one part of the body is injected.