TPIs relieve; they don't retrain. If desk posture or a weak shoulder built the knot, it will rebuild without correction — so we pair injections with Physical Therapy targeting the cause. If your points keep recurring in the same spot, that's a diagnostic clue, not a reason for endless injections.
A trigger point injection (TPI) treats a painful muscle knot directly: a fine needle enters the trigger point and delivers a small amount of local anesthetic (sometimes with an anti-inflammatory). The needle mechanically releases the taut band, the anesthetic breaks the pain cycle, and a knot that resisted weeks of massage and stretching can deactivate in one visit.
Myofascial pain syndrome, tension-type headaches fed by neck and shoulder knots, stubborn muscle spasm alongside back or neck conditions, and the muscular component that often persists after whiplash.
In-office, minutes per point, several points treatable per session. You'll feel the characteristic "twitch response" as the needle finds the point — brief, and actually the sign we're in the right spot. Soreness for a day or two afterward is normal; most patients resume normal activity immediately.
Most of the anxiety about a trigger point injection comes from not knowing how the visit runs. Here is the shape of it.
Tell us about any blood thinner well ahead of the appointment. Whether it needs pausing is a decision for the physician who prescribed it, and we coordinate that rather than leaving it to you. Say so too if you are pregnant or might be, if you have an active infection anywhere, if you are diabetic — a steroid can lift blood sugar for a few days — or if you have had a reaction to contrast or local anesthetic before. Eat normally unless we tell you otherwise, and bring your insurance card, a photo ID and a list of your medications.
You are positioned so the target is accessible, the skin is cleaned and numbed, and the needle is placed under imaging guidance so its position is confirmed rather than assumed. That guidance is the difference between treating the structure we identified and treating the neighbourhood around it. The procedure itself is measured in minutes; you are in the building longer than you are on the table.
Whether you need someone to drive you depends on whether any sedation is used, which we confirm when we schedule so it is not a surprise on the day. Plan a quiet rest of the day either way.
Expect the treated muscle to feel bruised or worked for a day or two — that soreness is the muscle recovering from the release, not a complication. The knot itself usually feels different within the first day.
Ice the site if it is sore. Keep moving, but skip anything strenuous for a day or two unless you have been told otherwise. Write down what changes and when — how much the pain drops, for how long, and what you could do that you could not before. That record is what tells us whether to repeat, adjust or change course, and it is more useful than trying to remember at the next visit.
Trigger point injections relieve; they do not retrain. If posture, a weak shoulder or a movement habit built the knot, it will rebuild without correction — which is why we pair them with Physical Therapy aimed at the cause, and why points that keep recurring in the same spot are a diagnostic clue rather than a reason for endless injections.
That is the practical reason everything sits in one building at Mountain View Pain Center. The physician who performed the procedure and the therapist working on the movement problem underneath it read the same chart, so the plan adjusts on what actually happened rather than on what someone was told at a follow-up weeks later.
Trigger point injections treat a taut, tender band in a muscle that reproduces your pain when pressed. That is a specific finding on examination, not a description of general soreness. If the examination does not find one, an injection into the area is unlikely to do much, and the more useful step is working out what is keeping the muscle loaded in the first place.
They are also the wrong answer when the muscle is guarding for a reason further upstream — a shoulder blade that hurts because of a neck level, a buttock that hurts because of a lumbar disc. Quieting the muscle without addressing the driver buys a short reprieve and is not worth repeating indefinitely.
Deferred where there is an infection over the site, where bleeding risk has not been reviewed, and where there is a known allergy to local anesthetic. If needles are genuinely intolerable for you, say so — there are other routes to the same muscle, and we would rather change the plan than talk you into one.
This is one of the lower-risk things done in the office, and the usual experience is a sore muscle for a day or two — sometimes more sore than before, briefly, which is normal and settles.
Common and temporary: bruising at the site, a few minutes of lightheadedness afterwards, and a short-lived numb patch where the local anesthetic went.
Less common: infection at the site, and a small area of skin lightening or dimpling where steroid has been used, which is why steroid is not automatically part of every injection. For injections into the muscles of the upper back and chest wall there is a small risk of puncturing the lung lining — uncommon, taken seriously, and the reason those sites are approached carefully and by feel of the anatomy rather than casually.
Call us for fever, for spreading redness, or for breathlessness or sharp chest pain after an injection in the upper back or chest wall.
A trigger point injection is performed in office at four Mountain View Pain Center clinics: Northglenn, Interquest in north Colorado Springs, Mesa, and Westgate in Glendale. Fluoroscopic guidance is available at Westgate and Mesa.
Every other clinic coordinates the procedure to one of those four. That is worth stating plainly rather than leaving you to work it out: you can start at the clinic nearest you, be evaluated there, and have the procedure itself scheduled at the site equipped for it, without repeating the workup or starting again with a new team. Your notes, imaging and plan travel with you.
If you are not sure which clinic is nearest, the clinic pages list every location in Colorado and Arizona with directions and parking.
A trigger point injection is billed to medical insurance rather than paid for out of pocket. What varies between plans is not usually whether it is covered but what has to be documented first.
We are in network with most Medicare Advantage plans; call to confirm yours. Workers' compensation is accepted at every location, in both states, across Pain Management, Physical Therapy, Chiropractic and Acupuncture, and auto injury claims are handled through med-pay or a lien we hold directly. Referrals are not required for any of it.
Your benefits are checked in advance — before the visit, not after. Nobody should find out what something costs afterwards. See insurance for the plans each state's clinics bill directly, and ask about any plan that is not listed.
Every clinic below has Chiropractic, Physical Therapy, Acupuncture and Pain Management on one chart, so care can move between them without a new referral.
Downtown out through the north, west, south and east suburbs.
Academy, Interquest and Tenderfoot cover the north, central and south of the city.
Harmony in Fort Collins and our Greeley clinic serve Larimer and Weld counties.
Across the Valley, from the West Valley through Phoenix to the East Valley.
Often 1–3 sessions per region. If points recur immediately, we investigate what's regenerating them rather than repeating indefinitely.
Same target, different tools: TPI adds anesthetic (physician-performed); dry needling uses needle alone (usually PT-performed). Both work; access and insurance often decide.
Usually, when medically indicated — we verify before your visit.
No. You can request an evaluation directly in Colorado or Arizona.
A trigger point injection delivers local anesthetic into the knot and is performed by a physician. Dry needling uses a needle alone, with nothing injected, and is performed by a physical therapist or chiropractor certified in it.
Yes — multiple points are commonly treated in a single session, and the number depends on the pattern rather than a fixed limit.
Then the injection is treating a symptom of something upstream. That is the point at which we look harder at posture, strength and the way you are loading the area rather than repeating the injection.
No. Dry needling uses a thin needle and no medication and is performed by a trained provider as part of a treatment plan; a trigger point injection places medication into the muscle and is performed by a Pain Management provider.
Trigger point injections are performed at Mountain View Pain Center clinics in Colorado and Arizona — see the full clinic map, Colorado or Arizona.
