• Pain physician · Jan 2001

    Effectiveness of lumbar facet joint nerve blocks in chronic low back pain: a randomized clinical trial.

    • L Manchikanti, V Pampati, C E Bakhit, J J Rivera, C D Beyer, K S Damron, and R C Barnhill.
    • Pain Management Center of Paducah, 2831 Lone Oak Road, Paducah, KY 42003, USA. drm@apex.net
    • Pain Physician. 2001 Jan 1;4(1):101-17.

    AbstractThis randomized clinical trial was designed to determine the effectiveness of therapeutic lumbar facet joint nerve blocks. Two hundred patients were evaluated with controlled diagnostic blocks for the presence of facet joint mediated pain. Eighty four patients, or 42% were determined to have lumbar facet joint mediated pain. These patients were randomly allocated into two groups: Group I receiving therapeutic injections with local anesthetic and Sarapin, and Group II receiving therapeutic injections with a mixture of local anesthetic, Sarapin, and methyl prednisolone. A total of 73 patients were treated with medial branch blocks under fluoroscopy. Results showed that patients underwent multiple procedures over a period of 2(1/2) years. The mean number of procedures or interventions was 2.5 +/- 0.09 from 1 to 3 months, whereas it was 4 +/- 0.13 for 4 to 6 months, 6.1 +/- 0.21 for 7 to 12 months, and 8.4 +/- 0.31 for 13 to 32 months. Cumulative significant relief with one to three injections was 100% up to 1 to 3 months, 82% for 4 to 6 months, 21% for 7 to 12 months, and 10% after 12 months, with a mean relief of 6.5 +/- 0.76 months. There was significant improvement noted in overall health status with improvement not only in pain relief, but also with physical, functional, and psychological status, as well as return-to-work status. In conclusion, the results of this study demonstrate that medial branch blocks with local anesthetic and Sarapin, with or without steroids, are a cost effective modality of treatment, resulting in improvement in pain status, physical status, psychological status, functional status and return to work.

      Pubmed     Free full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…