A study recently published in The Spine Journal suggests that the intradiscal steroid injection could alleviate pain for lower back pain patients, though there were many unknown factors associated with the study, such as work status, job type and insurance coverage.
The intradiscal steroid injections are a minimally invasive, nonsurgical therapy for patients with chronic lower back pain. A total of 120 patients with positive discography and end plate Modic changes at a single level participated in the study. The patients were either injected with the intradiscal steroid or a saline solution.
The VAS pain scores and ODI functions scores within both groups showed little improvement at three or six months after saline injection, but both groups showed significant improvement at the two time points after diprospan and diprospan+songemile injection, respectively. The latter two injection protocols led to no significant difference in pain relief and functional recovery.
Robert D. Fraser, MD, urged caution when utilizing the injection and was concerned with the study’s infection prevention techniques, duration of the patients’ pain and the therapy’s safety in repeated, long-term use. He said in a NASS release that “it would be quite inappropriate to develop treatment protocols based on this study.”
Read the news release about intradiscal steroid injections from NASS.
Read other coverage on NASS:
– NASS, Others Comment on North Carolina BCBS Policy on Lumbar Spinal Fusion
– NASS Advocacy: 3 Areas of National Focus
– NASS: Review and Consider New Literature on Vertebroplasty
