Statistical analysis of outcomes of basivertebral nerve radiofrequency ablation for vertebrogenic chronic low back pain management

In the era of office work, many people suffer from chronic low back pain (CLBP). Intra-osseous basivertebral nerve radiofrequency ablation (BVN RFA) is considered a way to treat vertebrogenic CLBP. However, the BVN RFA was not well studied. Using PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar, and the Cochrane Library, we found four studies of BVN RFA from the US and performed a statistical analysis of its effect on CLBP. We compared the sample statistics of the studies on pain intensity and LBP-related disability both in pre- and postoperative stages in two groups: treatment and control. Using the RevMan v. 5.4 software, we calculated the mean difference (MD) for each outcome between the groups and constructed forest plots. On a 0-10 pain scale, our results showed the postoperative pain intensity reduction in the treatment group compared to the control group (MD with 95% CI is –1.63 [–2.91, –0.35], p-value = 0.01). There was a considerable improvement in disability index as well (MD with 95% CI is –10.36 [–22.87, 2.14] on a 0-50 scale, p-value = 0.10), but the result was not statistically significant. Our analysis concludes that the intra-osseous BVN RFA is effective in reducing vertebrogenic CLBP, but more randomized controlled trials would be beneficial to study the effect of BVN RFA in more detail.