Pain Relief in CRPS-II after Spinal Cord and Motor Cortex Simultaneous Dual Stimulation.

UNLABELLED: We describe a case of a 30-year-old woman who suffered a traumatic injury of the right brachial plexus, developing severe complex regional pain syndrome type II (CRPS-II). After clinical treatment failure, spinal cord stimulation (SCS) was indicated with initial positive pain control. However, after 2 years her pain progressively returned to almost baseline intensity before SCS. Additional motor cortex electrode implant was then proposed as a rescue therapy and connected to the same pulse generator. This method allowed simultaneous stimulation of the motor cortex and SCS in cycling mode with independent stimulation parameters in each site. At 2 years follow-up, the patient reported sustained improvement in pain with dual stimulation, reduction of painful crises, and improvement in quality of life. The encouraging results in this case suggests that this can be an option as add-on therapy over SCS as a possible rescue therapy in the management of CRPS-II. However, comparative studies must be performed in order to determine the effectiveness of this therapy. KEY WORDS: Chronic neuropathic pain, Complex regional pain syndrome Type II, brachial plexus injury, motor cortex stimulation, spinal cord stimulation.

Ozone therapy as a treatment for low back pain secondary to herniated disc: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.

BACKGROUND: Low back pain (LBP) is one of the most common and important health problems affecting the population worldwide and remains mostly unsolved. Ozone therapy has emerged as an additional treatment method. Questions persist concerning its clinical efficacy. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of our study was to evaluate the therapeutic results of percutaneous injection of ozone for low back pain secondary to disc herniation. STUDY DESIGN: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. METHODS: A comprehensive literature search was conducted using all electronic databases from 1966 through September 2011. The quality of individual articles was assessed based on the modified Cochrane review criteria for randomized trials and criteria from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. OUTCOME PARAMETERS: The outcome measure was short-term pain relief of at least 6 months or long-term pain relief of more than 6 months. RESULTS: Eight observational studies were included in the systematic review and 4 randomized trials in the meta-analysis. The indicated level of evidence for long-term pain relief was II-3 for ozone therapy applied intradiscally and II-1 for ozone therapy applied paravertebrally. The grading of recommendation was 1C for intradiscal ozone therapy and 1B for paravertebral ozone therapy. LIMITATIONS: The main limitations of this review are the lack of precise diagnosis and the frequent use of mixed therapeutic agents. The meta-analysis included mainly active-control trials. No placebo-controlled trial was found. CONCLUSIONS: Ozone therapy appears to yield positive results and low morbidity rates when applied percutaneously for the treatment of chronic low back pain.