Journal of spinal disorders
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The cause of lumbar radicular symptoms often remains elusive after standard clinical and radiographic evaluation. Selective nerve root block is a useful test to indicate whether the pain is neural in origin and/or whether nerve root is pain producing in these patients with equivocal clinical and imaging studies. Over 8 years, the author performed selective nerve root blocks in 215 patients. ⋯ Overall, there were 38 good (53%), 16 fair (23%), and 17 poor (24%) surgical results. The results for those patients who had had prior surgery were disappointing (52% poor). These data reaffirm that surgical intervention should only be recommended for previously operated-upon patients with unequivocal findings.