One-Needle Vs Three-Needle Radiofrequency in Low Back Pain Due to Facet Joint Arthritis

Low back pain (LBP) is more accurately called lumbago or lumbosacral pain, which is defined as discomfort, tension, or stiffness below the costal margin and above the inferior gluteal folds. In Egypt, patients with LBP constituted a high percentage of patients seeking medical care at outpatient's clinics reaching about 48% making it one of the most common causes of disability in the working population. no large-scale retrospective studies have investigated long-term clinical predictors of success in individuals receiving radiofrequency ablation (RFA) of the medial branches for facet joint arthropathy. Employees who are unable to work due to back pain spend a significant amount of time on sick leave, which impacts the productivity in the work place. Risk factors for LBP are multifactorial, including exercise, obesity, smoking, age, and sex, and these can be grouped together as individual fa pctors. Low back pain can arise from multiple anatomic locations: the intervertebral discs that are positioned between the vertebral bodies of the spine, the facet joint, but also non bony structures such as the paravertebral muscles, ligaments, and fascia. Postmortem studies have revealed that intervertebral discs and facet joints exhibit the greatest degree of degeneration within the spine, thus indicating the potential role of these structures in causing low back pain. In patients with a structural cause of low back pain, up to 40% of cases likely arise from the lumbar facet joints. The etiology of lumbar facet-joint pain is thought to be stress and trauma to the joint, which subsequently leads to inflammation of the joint capsule. Treatment options for facet arthropathy range from conservative management with medications and physical therapy to interventional management, including facet-joint injections and radiofrequency ablation (RFA) of the medial branches of the posterior rami to the facet joints. RFA of the medial branches of the dorsal rami is thought to be the most effective interventional treatment for facet joint pain and has been reported to relieve pain for 6 months to 1 year in 60% of patients. Although providing benefit in a significant proportion of patients, there remains a group of patients who do not experience any pain relief from RFA or experience only benefit from the ablation for a short period.

Failure of RFA has been attributed to technical failure of coagulating the nerve or coagulation of a minimal section of the nerve, allowing for early reinnervation. Consequently, increasing the success rate and duration of relief may require techniques that increase the likelihood of successful nerve ablation over a relevant distance by maximizing lesion size.

The aim of this technical note is to detail a two-needle approach to lumbar medial branch RF denervation to maximize lesion size along the course of the medial branch nerve.

VAS scores were based on self-reported measures of lumbar back pain and were recorded as a continuum between 2 ends of a scale, with "no pain" corresponding to the left end of the scale (0 cm) and "worst pain" corresponding to the right end of the scale (10 cm). The VAS is a validated, subjective tool to measure both acute and chronic pain. Pre-procedural VAS pain scores were documented prior to the lumbar RFA procedure (pre-VAS) and during the following time points after lumbar medial branch RFA was performed: short-term (1-week to 1-month), 3-month, 6-month, and 1-year visits.