Is Lumbar Radiofrequency Ablation Right for Your Low Back Pain?

Whether the pain in your low back is constant and nagging or it flares with specific movements, you’re tired of living at the mercy of this discomfort. Making matters worse, maybe medications are only providing temporary relief, and you can’t engage in any physical therapy thanks to the pain.

You’re not alone in your struggle — back pain is common, and nearly 40% of adults in the United States report the problem. 

As spine health experts, the SOAR Spine and Orthopedics team offers a comprehensive toolkit for managing low back pain, and one of our most reliable workhorses is lumbar radiofrequency ablation. Let’s take a look at how this quick-and-easy procedure works and whether it’s right for your back pain.

Radiofrequency ablation basics

Pain anywhere in your body is a complex messaging process — sensory nerves register harmful stimuli, send a message to your brain for interpretation, and your brain creates a pain signal. 

Along your spine, you have 31 pairs of nerve roots that exit your spine to create most of your peripheral nervous system, so your spine can be a highly active area for nerves.

The concept behind radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is simple — we disrupt this pain messaging. More specifically, we identify the nerves that are responsible for your pain signaling and target them with RF energy to ablate, or destroy, the nerve endings. When we do this, these nerves can no longer communicate with your brain, at least until they grow back.

Undergoing lumbar RFA

One of the many benefits of RFA is that we usually test the treatment first. To ensure that we target the right nerves, we first administer a nerve block injection with a temporary anesthetic. If you experience relief over the next 24 hours, then we can confirm the culprits behind your low back pain and we can proceed with the RFA.

Another benefit of this treatment is that RFA is minimally invasive, and we perform it right here in our offices using only local anesthesia. Once we numb the area, we insert a needle into your lower back to deliver the RF energy, using a live X-ray to guide us. Once the needle is in position, it takes just seconds for us to distribute the energy, and then we remove the needle.

The results from an RFA procedure typically take a few days to settle in, but many of our patients experience anywhere from six months to three years of pain relief afterward. This wide range depends upon the rate of nerve regrowth. The good news is that, if and when the pain returns, we can perform another RFA procedure.

Candidates for lumbar RFA

Now let’s determine whether this effective treatment is best for your low back pain. Lumbar RFA works well for chronic low back pain due to:

• Facet joint arthritis
• Lumbar spinal stenosis
• Sacroiliac joint pain, which is responsible for 15 to 30% of low back pain

We also use lumbar RFA for degenerative changes in your spine that might not get classified among those above.

The best way to learn whether RFA is right for you is to visit with one of our spine specialists. To get started, you can contact us today online or by phone for a consultation at one of our offices in Santa Clara or Redwood City, California.