Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Aug 6, 2022; 10(22): 7720-7727
Published online Aug 6, 2022. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v10.i22.7720
Effectiveness of pulsed radiofrequency on the medial cervical branches for cervical facet joint pain
Min Cheol Chang, Seoyon Yang
Min Cheol Chang, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, College of Medicine, Yeungnam University, Taegu 42415, South Korea
Seoyon Yang, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, School of Medicine, Ewha Woman's University Seoul Hospital, Seoul 07804, South Korea
Author contributions: Chang MC conceived and designed the paper; Yang S collected the data; both Chang MC and Yang S analyzed the data, contributed to the writing of the manuscript, and approved the final draft of the manuscript; and All authors have read and agreed to the submitted version of the manuscript.
Supported by National Research Foundation of Korea, No. NRF2021R1A2C1013073.
Institutional review board statement: The Institutional Review Board of Yeungnam university hospital approved this study, and the need for written informed consent was waived due to the retrospective design of the study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Informed consent statement: This study was conducted retrospectively, and there was the need for written informed consent was waived.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Seoyon Yang, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, School of Medicine, Ewha Woman's University Seoul Hospital, 260 Gonghang-daero, Gangseo-gu, Seoul 07804, South Korea. mssyang@ewha.ac.kr
Received: September 29, 2021
Peer-review started: September 29, 2021
First decision: April 7, 2022
Revised: April 26, 2022
Accepted: June 16, 2022
Article in press: June 16, 2022
Published online: August 6, 2022
Processing time: 296 Days and 6.9 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: This is a retrospective study to investigate the effectiveness of pulsed radiofrequency (PRF) stimulation of cervical medial branches in patients with chronic cervical facet pain (CFP). Eleven of the 21 patients (52.4%) reported successful pain relief 3 mo after the PRF procedure. Compared to the numeric rating scale scores for CFP before PRF stimulation, those at 1 and 3 mo after PRF stimulation had significantly decreased after 1-month and 3-month follow-up. PRF stimulation on cervical medial branches may be a useful therapeutic option to control chronic CFP.