WEDNESDAY, Sept. 9 (HealthDay News) -- In patients with low back pain and radicular pain, an L2 spinal nerve infiltration may temporarily reduce symptoms, according to a study in the Sept. 1 issue of Spine.
Yasuaki Murata, M.D., of Tokyo Women's Medical University in Japan, and colleagues randomly assigned 246 patients (90 men and 156 women) who had been treated with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs for at least two weeks to receive either the L2 block or a control block.
After 10 weeks, the researchers found that 28 L2-block patients reported relief from low back pain, and that 10 of them continued to report an adequate therapeutic effect at 24 weeks. They further note that nine control-block patients reported relief at 10 and 24 weeks.
"An L2 block is useful in reducing low back pain due to the disorders of L2 spinal nerve-innervated structures, such as the disc, facet joint, and sacroiliac joint," the authors write. "However, the therapeutic value of an L2 block may be occasionally insufficient to alleviate pain completely because of the short duration of its effect."
Abstract
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