Experts Strongly Recommend Against Spine Injections for Chronic Back Pain

Experts Strongly Recommend Against Spine Injections for Chronic Back Pain


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Spine injections should not be given to adults with chronic back pain Paine The bmj ,

Their strong recommendations apply to procedus Cancer, Infection or Inflammatory Arthritis.

Their advice is based on the latest evidence and is part of The bmj’s “Rapid recommendations” Initiative – To Produce Rapid and Trustworthy Guidance Based on New Evidence to Help Doors Make Better decisions with their patients.

Chronic Back Pain is the Leading Cause of Disability Worldwide. It is estimated to affect one in five adults aged 20–59, with higher rates likely amn older adults. In 2016, low back and neck pain accounted for the highest health care spending in the US at $ 134.5 billion.

Procedures Such as Epidural Steroid Injections, NERVE BULOCKS and RadiOfrequency Ablation (Using radio waves to destroy nerves) Provide conflicting recommendations for their use.

So an International Panel, Made Up of Clinicians, People Living With Chronic Spine Pain, And Research Methodologists, Carried out a Deetailed Analysis of the latest evidence using the Grade Approach (A System used To assess the quality of evidence).

This evidence, based on reviews of randomized trials and observational studies, compared the benefits and harms of 13 common interventional procedus, or combinations of procedus, for chronic, for chronic, for chronic Against sham procedus.

After Careful Consideration, The Panel Concluded that there was no high certainty evidence for any procedure or combination of procedures, and all low and moderate certaintey evidence Relief for Eather Axial Pain (in a Specific Area of ​​the Spine) or Radicular Pain (radiating from the spine to the arms or legs) for spine injections compared with sham procaedures.

As such, they strongly recommended against their use.

This incluses these injections of local anesthetic, steroids, or their combination; Epidural Injections of Local Anesthetic, Steroids, or their combination; And radiofrequency ablation with or without local anesthetic plus steroid injections.

The panel added that these procedures are costly, a burden on patients, and carry a small rain of harm. As such, they say almost all informed patients will choose to avoid them.

Finally, they acknowledge that further research is warranted and may alter future recommendations, in particular for procedus currently supportly supported by low or very low customer Further Research is also needed to establish the effects of interventional procedus on important outs for patients for patients, such as opioid use, return to work, and Sleep Quality.

In a linked editorial, jane ballantyne at the university of washington say the question the question this recommendation rayses are it is reasonable to continue to continue to of these procedures to people with chronic with chronic with

It is Never Easy to Change Entrenched Culture, She Writes, “But the Evidence Fails to Support the Widespread Use of these Injections, The Less Inclined Health Care Systems will be them.”

“This will not be the last word on spine injections for chronic back pain, but it adds to a growing sense that chronic pain management needs Reimburesments between procedural and non-prochable chronic pain treatment, “She concludes.

More information:
Commonly used interventional procedus for non-cancer chronic spine pain: a clinical practice guideline, The bmj (2025). Doi: 10.1136/bmj-2024-079970

Provided by British Medical Journal


Citation: Experts Strongly Recommend Against Spine Injections for Chronic Back Pain (2025, February 19) Retrieved 19 February 2025 from

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