What is it about?
Chronic neck pain can be caused by degeneration of the small joints between the vertebrae of the neck. When conservative treatment, such as medication and exercise, fails to provide satisfactory pain relief, denervation of the facet joints may be considered. Therefore a needle is placed at the nerves that innervate the facet joints. The success of the treatment depends on the correct placement of the needle. This study reports an anatomically justified manner to bring the needle in the correct place for denervation.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
In this paper the modified approach is described and illustrated with anatomical drawings. The pros and cons of the other commonly used techniques as described in the literature are discussed .
Perspectives
The writing of this article forced me to study more in depth the anatomy of the neck, but not restricted to the neuroanatomy because the vascularization is even more important to avoid complications.
Maarten Van Eerd
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: A Modified Posterolateral Approach for Radiofrequency Denervation of the Medial Branch of the Cervical Segmental Nerve in Cervical Facet Joint Pain Based on Anatomical Considerations, Pain Practice, October 2016, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/papr.12499.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
