Chronic intractable lumbosacral radicular pain, is there a remedy? Pulsed radiofrequency treatment and volumetric modifications of the lumbar dorsal root ganglia

Purpose Evaluation of clinical and radiological effects of the therapeutic outcome of CT-guided pulsed radiofrequency (PRF) treatment adjacent to the lumbar dorsal root ganglion (DRG) for patients with chronic intractable lumbosacral radicular pain in a single-center prospective longitudinal study in order to evaluate predictive factors of safety and therapeutic success. Materials and methods Thirty patients, from 2016 to 2018, were enrolled (age: 42-80 aa, 66.7% men and 33.3% females) with low back pain, lumbosciatalgia and/or lumbocruralgia, resistant to previous medical and physical treatments for a period not < 3 months, failure of surgical and chemiodiscolysis with ozone oxygen therapy. Each patient was subjected to a clinical evaluation (antalgic walking, sensitive deficit, interviews with specific questionnaires: ODI, RDQ,VAS) and to a radiological evaluation with MRI examination, before and 30 days after the CT-guided PRF treatment. Measurements of the thickness of the involved and not involved DRG were taken using common postprocessing software of MRI examinations in order to have measurement parameters for comparison. We analyzed the clinical course using the paired samples T test in order to evaluate modification for each clinical and radiological parameter (statistical significance p < 0.05). Results Significant improvements of the clinical outcomes with a good resolution of the pain symptoms (VAS evaluation: The score fell from 68.47 to 39.17 with a difference of 29.3 and a reduction of the 42.79% in the perceived pain, p = 0.00000152). The thickness of DRG falls from an average media of 0.586-0.448 cm (p = 0.000085), with a difference of 0.138 cm and a percentage reduction of 22.30%. Conclusions PRF treatment of the DRG may be considered for patients with chronic severe lumbosacral radicular pain refractory to conventional medical management when other noninvasive or surgical procedures fail. It is minimally invasive, inexpensive and simple to perform with no complications.

Automated summary

This study evaluated the clinical and radiological effects of CT-guided pulsed radiofrequency treatment for patients with chronic lumbosacral radicular pain. The results showed significant improvement in pain symptoms after treatment, suggesting that PRF treatment may be a minimally invasive, inexpensive, and effective option for patients with refractory pain.