Facet joint syndrome is pain at the joint between two vertebrae in your spine. The facet joints are the joints in your spine that make your back flexible and enable you to bend and twist. Healthy facet joints have cartilage, which allows your vertebrae to move smoothly against each other without grinding. Each joint is lubricated with synovial fluid for additional protection against wear and tear. When your facet joints become swollen and painful due to osteoarthritis, it is called facet joint syndrome.

Causes
As a part of normal aging process. Degeneration of the intervertebral discs narrows the space between each vertebra which places too much pressure on the articular cartilage surface of the facet joint.

When facet joint arthritis gets bad enough, the cartilage and fluid that lubricate the facet joints are eventually destroyed as well, leaving bone rubbing on bone.

Bone spurs begin to form around the facet joints. When bone spurs develop, they can take up space in the and press into nerve roots.

As the bone spurs begin to grow larger, they can eventually extend into the spinal canal itself. This leads to narrowing of your spinal canal, called spinal stenosis.

Symptoms
Patients faces difficulty twisting and bending their spine.
If you have facet joint syndrome in your cervical spine , you may have to turn your entire body to look left or right. Facet joint syndrome in your lumbar spine (low back) may make it difficult for you to straighten your back or get up out of a chair.
Pain, numbness, and muscle weakness associated with facet joint syndrome will affect different parts of your body depending on which of your nerves are being affected.

If the nerves affected are in your cervical spine, you may have symptoms in your neck, shoulders, arms and hands.

If the nerves are in your lumbar spine you may have symptoms in your buttocks, legs, and feet.

Diagnostic Spinal Injection
Your doctor may recommend you to undergo a fluoroscopic guided injection into your facet joint. During this test, a local anesthetic is injected into the joint or nerves which supplies your facet joint. Once the needle is in the right place, anesthetic is injected to numb your joint or nerves. If the pain goes away, your doctor can be relatively sure that the problem is coming from the facet joint that was injected and not somewhere else in your spine.
Treatment
1) Medications to ease pain.
2) The doctor may also add a dose of cortisone to the diagnostic injection to ease your pain. Cortisone is a powerful anti-inflammatory medication that calms the arthritis inside the joint and reduces pain. The effect is usually temporary, but it may last up to several months. This can be safely repeated for two to three times a year.
3) RF procedure can be done which is effective from few months to few years.
4) Physical therapy and rehabilitation.
5) Surgical Treatment
Surgery may become an option if all conservative methods of treatment fail.Surgery on the facet joint usually consists of a fusion of the joint . To join the two vertebrae together, the doctor will usually insert several metal screws across the joint.