[Mesotherapy as a treatment of pain and disability in patients affected by neck pain in spondylartrosis]. / La mesoterapia come trattamento del dolore e della disabilità in pazienti affetti da cervicalgia in spondilartrosi.

Mesotherapy is a technique that treats locoregional pain with intradermal injection of a drug in the affected area. Its short-term efficacy was observed in patients with low back pain using both normal saline solution, if there were contraindications to drugs' use, or a cocktail of drugs (normal saline solution, lidocaine hydrochloride, and lysine acetylsalicylate), whereas only the latter provided benefit for up to three months after treatment. The aim of this study was to measure the effects of mesotherapy in patients affected by neck pain in spondylarthrosis, a common pathology in rehabilitation, associated with significant disability and increased health expenditure. One hundred patients participated in the study, of whom 50 (mean age 66.9 years) were treated with mesotherapy with a cocktail of drugs and 50 (mean age 64.7 years) with normal saline solution. Pain and disability were measured at different times (i.e. before treatment, at the end of five weeks of treatment, four weeks and 12 weeks after treatment), by using different pain scales, including a visual analogue scale, the short-form McGill pain questionnaire, the Present Pain Intensity scale and the Neck Disability Index. Mesotherapy with either normal saline solution or with a cocktail of drugs were both found to be effective in the short term in reducing pain and disability. However, only patients treated with a cocktail of drugs showed improvement at three months following treatment.

Efficacy of mesotherapy using drugs versus normal saline solution in chronic spinal pain: a retrospective study.

Mesotherapy, or intradermal therapy, is a therapeutic approach that is gaining popularity, but there is still a significant lack of information on its mechanisms of action or the pharmacokinetics of the therapeutic regimens. This retrospective study on 220 records compared the short-term and long-term effects of mesotherapy using a mixture of drugs versus normal saline solution in the treatment of patients with chronic spinal pain (CSP). At the end of treatment, outcome measures showed a significant improvement (P<0.003) in both groups, which persisted at the follow-up assessments. At 12 weeks of follow-up, the improvement was significantly greater in patients treated with the drug cocktail than with the saline solution (P<0.05). Mesotherapy was effective in patients affected by CSP, with high patient satisfaction reported irrespective of the agent used. Considering the risks and costs of drugs, normal saline solution appears to be the best agent in cost-benefit terms for treating localized pain by mesotherapy in CSP.