Injection therapy for subacute and chronic low back pain: an updated Cochrane review
Three pages on PainSci cite Staal 2009: 1. The Complete Guide to Low Back Pain 2. The Complete Guide to Neck Pain & Cricks 3. Do Nerve Blocks Work for Neck Pain and Low Back Pain?
PainSci commentary on Staal 2009: ?This page is one of thousands in the PainScience.com bibliography. It is not a general article: it is focused on a single scientific paper, and it may provide only just enough context for the summary to make sense. Links to other papers and more general information are provided wherever possible.
A review of all kinds of injection therapies for the low back and finding “no strong evidence for or against the use of any type of injection therapy,” which is not as optimistic as Datta 2009.
original abstract †Abstracts here may not perfectly match originals, for a variety of technical and practical reasons. Some abstacts are truncated for my purposes here, if they are particularly long-winded and unhelpful. I occasionally add clarifying notes. And I make some minor corrections.
STUDY DESIGN: A systematic review of randomized controlled trials (RCTs).
OBJECTIVE: To determine if injection therapy is more effective than placebo or other treatments for patients with subacute or chronic low back pain.
SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA: The effectiveness of injection therapy for low back pain is still debatable. Heterogeneity of target tissue, pharmacological agent, and dosage, generally found in RCTs, point to the need for clinically valid comparisons in a literature synthesis.
METHODS: We updated the search of the earlier systematic review and searched the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, MEDLINE, and EMBASE databases up to March 2007 for relevant trials reported in English, French, German, Dutch, and Nordic languages. We also screened references from trials identified. RCTs on the effects of injection therapy involving epidural, facet, or local sites for subacute or chronic low back pain were included. Studies that compared the effects of intradiscal injections, prolotherapy, or ozone therapy with other treatments were excluded unless injection therapy with another pharmaceutical agent (no placebo treatment) was part of one of the treatment arms. Studies about injections in sacroiliac joints and studies evaluating the effects of epidural steroids for radicular pain were also excluded.
RESULTS: Eighteen trials (1179 participants) were included in this review. The injection sites varied from epidural sites and facet joints (i.e. intra-articular injections, peri-articular injections and nerve blocks) to local sites (i.e. tender-and trigger points). The drugs that were studied consisted of corticosteroids, local anesthetics, and a variety of other drugs. The methodologic quality of the trials was limited with 10 of 18 trials rated as having a high methodologic quality. Statistical pooling was not possible because of clinical heterogeneity in the trials. Overall, the results indicated that there is no strong evidence for or against the use of any type of injection therapy.
CONCLUSION: There is insufficient evidence to support the use of injection therapy in subacute and chronic low-back pain. However, it cannot be ruled out that specific subgroups of patients may respond to a specific type of injection therapy. «It never can!»
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- “Cervical medial branch blocks for chronic cervical facet joint pain: a randomized, double-blind, controlled trial with one-year follow-up,” Manchikanti et al, Spine, 2008.
- “Systematic review of diagnostic utility and therapeutic effectiveness of thoracic facet joint interventions,” Atluri et al, Pain Physician, 2008.
- “Systematic assessment of diagnostic accuracy and therapeutic utility of lumbar facet joint interventions,” Datta et al, Pain Physician, 2009.
- “Systematic review of the therapeutic effectiveness of cervical facet joint interventions: an update,” Falco et al, Pain Physician, 2012.
- “An update of evaluation of therapeutic thoracic facet joint interventions,” Manchikanti et al, Pain Physician, 2012.
This page is part of the PainScience BIBLIOGRAPHY, which contains plain language summaries of thousands of scientific papers & others sources. It’s like a highly specialized blog. A few highlights:
- Classical Conditioning Fails to Elicit Allodynia in an Experimental Study with Healthy Humans. Madden 2017 Pain Med.
- Topical glyceryl trinitrate (GTN) and eccentric exercises in the treatment of mid-portion achilles tendinopathy (the NEAT trial): a randomised double-blind placebo-controlled trial. Kirwan 2024 Br J Sports Med.
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- Cannabidiol (CBD) products for pain: ineffective, expensive, and with potential harms. Moore 2023 J Pain.