“TO STUDY THE COMPARISON OF INTRAARTICULAR LUMBAR FACET JOINT STEROID INJECTIONS AND LUMBAR FACET JOINT RADIOFREQUENCY DENERVATION IN TREATMENT OF LOW BACK PAIN”.

Introduction: Lumbar facet joint degeneration is a source of chronic low back pain, with an incidence of 15% to 45% among patients with low back pain. Pain arising from the lumbar facet joints is a common cause of axial back pain in adults. Radiofrequency ablation (RF) of the medial branches of the spinal dorsal rami has been used as a treatment option. Various therapeutic techniques in the treatment of facet-related pain have been described in the literature, including intraarticular lumbar facet joint steroid injections and radiofrequency denervation. Aim and Objective: To provide evidence based clinical practice guidelines for comparison of fluoroscopic guided facet joint radiofrequency ablation of medial branch and facet joint steroid injection for low back pain. Material and Methods: This was a prospective non-randomized study carried out in the Department of Anaesthesia at Maharaja Institute of Medical Sciences for a period of 1 year i.e, April 2023 to April 2024 on patients who were admitted from casualty and outpatient’s department with a diagnosis of chronic low back pain. All patients were assigned to LFJ intraarticular steroid infiltrations or RF denervation. All of the enrolled patients were suffering from LFJ-related pain at the L3/L4–L5/S1. Results: In the present study, there were 65 patients screened out of which 8 patients drop out. There were 57 patients of low back pain in which the mean age of Group A patients was (62.26 ± 11.56) years and Group B patients was(55.75±10.25)years. It was observed that Males were more commonly affected than females. Duration of back pain of Group A patients was (1.72±0.85) years while that of Group B patients was (2.26±0.92) years. Vas scoring before procedure was found to be not significant. But vas scoring at 6 months after procedure was found to be very highly significant. Rolland Morris questionnaire before procedure in both the groups was found to be insignificant. But at 6 months after procedure between both groups was found to be highly significant. Conclusion : Intraarticular steroid infiltration or radiofrequency denervation appear to be a managing option for chronic function-limiting low back pain of facet origin with favourable short- and midterm results in terms of pain relief and function improvement, but improvements were similar in both groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]