A physician is proposing this procedure to a former patient of mine who wants my opinion. She told me he first would do a nerve block which if effective in reducing her pain, would make her a candidate for RFA. Does anyone here have experience with this procedure for arthritic pain? Pros/cons, and opinions all welcome.
I had a chance in the late 90's to sit in a small session workshop with Dr Hillel Sommer. He was a physiatrist(sp) from Winnipeg Manitoba. He worked with Nikolai Bogduk on the initial ablation work. They looked a C spine facet innervation and did fluro guided injection of freezing first to look for symptom abatment.( patients were blinded to expected duration) Then they did hypertonic saliene for aggravation. If all came back pos then the cooked the nerve. They found up to 14 months for regrowth. Since some of Hillel's patients were post MVA they expected recurrence after regrowth but saw the pain cycle break and stop in some. I can't recall where I read it lately but I believe that this kind of tx has not been so popular now.
Sebastian Asselbergs -> RE: Radiofrequency Ablation for Arthritis Pain (May 30, 2008 6:43:06 AM)