Lidocaine is a local anesthetic or numbing medication. It’s used before several medical procedures, both minimally-invasive and surgical, to numb the targeted areas of the body. It numbs the targeted areas, thereby ensuring a comfortable experience during injections, surgeries, or the insertion of catheters.
Lidocaine is often combined with epidural or facet block injections to numb the assumed source of chronic pain, such as the facet joints assumed to be responsible for your pain. If the injection provides immediate relief, it indicates that the targeted facet joint is solely responsible. And failure indicates that another facet joint or nerve root is responsible.