THE EFFICACY AND SAFETY OF RADIOFREQUENCY NEUROTOMY IN THE TREATMENT OF CHRONIC CERVICAL FACET (ZYGAPOPHYSEAL) JOINT PAIN: A RETROSPECTIVE STUDY.

Objective: To investigate the efficacy and safety of traditional radiofrequency ablation (TRFA) for the treatment of cervical facet-mediated pain. We evaluated 169 TRFA procedures performed on 64 patients who had clinical diagnoses of chronic cervical facet-mediated pain. TRFA was performed in patients who were refractory to conservative therapy and responded favorably to two sets of diagnostic medial branch blocks. Materials and Methods: For patients who underwent TRFA, pain scores were recorded on a numeric rating scale (NRS) at different pretreatment and post-treatment follow-up (FU) time points [1st (4-8 weeks), 2nd (>2-6 months) and 3rd (>6 months)]. The primary outcomes were NRS improvement and average improvement from baseline NRS (at least 50% or more) at each FU time point. The secondary outcome measure was the time to repeat treatment with subsequent cervical TRFA. Results: The primary outcome measure was achieved in 1st FU time-point with 56.75% pain reduction. In the 2nd and 3rd FU, we found a 47.66% and 21.47% reduction in NRS, respectively. Our subgroup analysis of the age of the patients demonstrated that the younger (=50) age groups showed superior pain relief with cervical TRFA in both the 1st and 2nd FU time points, with 58.36% and 53.46% reduction in NRS, respectively. Conclusion: TRFA is an effective and safe procedure for the treatment of cervical facet-related pain in the early (<2 months) and intermediate terms (2-6 months). There was partial recurrence of pain in the long term (>6 months) in all age groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]