Innere Medizin: Offener Zugang
Offener Zugang

Abstrakt

Management of Discogenic Lumbar Pain with Intradiscal Electrothermal Therapy (IDET)

Juan David Urazan Murcia

Aim: Evaluate the effectiveness of intradiscal electrothermal therapy in treating discogenic low back pain.

Methods: Using three data bases (PubMed, Cochrane and Scopus) we searched for clinical studies evaluating non-operative methods of treating discogenic back pain that were published between 2004-2012. Only systematic reviews and meta-analysis were included. Inclusion criteria: included if they met the following inclusion criteria: patients were at least 18 years of age; they were written in English and involved patients with chronic non-malignant
pain who had never been surgical managed, after removal of duplicate citations only 4 articles were selected.

Results: The two systematic reviews and two meta-analyzes whose objective were to establish the IDET roll in the improvement of discogenic pain, did not find statistically significant evidence to recommend this treatment. Only one study established a possible improvement of discogenic pain at 6 months with acceptable evidence quality.

Conclusion: The current studies provide contradictory evidence of it benefit and it remains unclear whether these interventions confer stable long-term benefit. Thus, physicians must exercise caution in recommending this treatment for patients with discogenic chronic back pain.