Comparison of Treatment Outcome of Transforaminal and Caudal Epidural Steroid Injections for Radiating Low Back Pain

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Back pain is one of the most common reasonsfor the patients to seek emergency care. Caudal-ESI is both thesafest and the easiest epidural injection, and it does not alwaysrequire fluoroscopic guidance. Transforaminal ESI seems tobe more effective at reducing pain, improving functionality,and preventing spinal surgery, based on the data reported inprevious studies and systematic reviews. Hence; under the lightof above mentioned data the present study was undertaken forassessing and comparing the efficacy of Transforaminal andCaudal Epidural Steroid Injections Outcome for the treatmentin patients with chronic low back pain.Material and methods: A total of 20 patients with chroniclow back pain who underwent treatment with Transforaminalor caudal epidural steroid injection were enrolled in thepresent study. Patients belonged to the age group of 20-75years of age. All the patients were divided into two groupswith 10 patients in each group as follows Group 1 includedpatients who were given injections through Transforaminalroute, while group 2 included patients who were giveninjections through caudal route. Pain relief after the epiduralsteroid injection using Visual analogue scale (VAS). Clinicalprofile of the subjects was obtained and details were filled in aproforma. All the results were summarized in Microsoft excelsheet and were analyzed by SPSS software.Results: Mean VAS at Pre-injection, Immediate Postinjection, Post-injection 1 month and Post-injection 3 monthfor subjects of group 1 was found to be 7.5, 4.3, 3.5 and 3.4respectively. Mean VAS at Pre-injection, Immediate Postinjection, Post-injection 1 month and Post-injection 3 monthfor subjects of group 1 was found to be 7.2, 5.1, 4.1 and 4.2respectively. While comparing the mean VAS among thepatients of both the study groups, at different post-treatmenttime intervals, significant results were obtained.Conclusion: Transforaminal approach demonstrated superioreffectiveness and should be performed with increasingfrequency.