Interventional Treatment for Cervical Pain

ABSTRACT

Radiofrequency current is simply a tool used to create discrete thermal lesions in neural pathways in order to interrupt transmission. In pain medicine, radiofrequency lesions have been used to interrupt nociceptive pathways at various sites. This is a palliative treatment accompanying complications, so its use should be limited to those patients with cancer pain or chronic non-cancer pain when conservative non-surgical therapies have proven to be ineffective or intoerable. With the development of alternatives such as intrathecal opioid infusion and neuromodulation technologies, the number of patients considered for neuroablative therapy may dwindle. Nevertheless, there is a line of evidence that radiofrequency neurotomy has an important role in the management of trigeminal neuralgia, nerve root avulsion and spinal pain. This article introduces the radiofrequency lesioning as an interventional treatment modality of cervical pain.