• Erdinc Civelek, Tufan Cansever, Serdar Kabatas, Atilla Kircelli, Cem Yilmaz, Murat Musluman, Demet Ofluoglu, and Hakan Caner.
• Baskent University, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Neurosurgery, Istanbul, Turkey.
• Turk Neurosurg. 2012 Jan 1;22(2):200-6.

AimThe study was conducted to compare the clinical effectiveness of FJ injections (FJI) and FJ radiofrequency (FJRF) denervation in patients with chronic low back pain.Material And MethodsThis study included 100 patients; 50 in FJI 50 in FJRF group. VNS, NASS and EQ-5D were used to evaluate the outcomes. All outcome assessments were performed at baseline, 3 months, 6 months and 12 months.ResultsFJI in early post-op but FJRF in 1st, 6th and 12th month VNS showed better results (p < 0.001). There was no significant difference in the 1st (p=1) and 6th month (p=0.13) but in 12th month (p=0.04) in NASS. Increase in level number showed positive effect in NASS in FJRF group (p=0.018) but no effect in FJI group (p=0.823) in the 12th month follow-up. There was no significant difference with respect to 1st month (p=0.17), 6th month (p=0.22) and 12th month (p=0.11) post-procedure follow-ups in EQ-5D. At the short term FJI was more effective than FJRF however in midterm follow-up FJRF had more satisfying results than FJRF.ConclusionTo our knowledge, the first choice should be the FJI and if pain reoccurs after a period of time or injection is not effective, RF procedure should be used for the treatment of chronic lumbar pain.

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