Would pulsed radiofrequency applied to different anatomical regions have effective results for chronic pain treatment?

OBJECTIVE: To observe the effect of Pulsed radiofrequency on patients presenting with complaints of chronic pain. METHODS: It was a retrospective cross sectional study which included patients with chronic pain who did not respond to conventional treatment.The study was conducted at the Pain Management Centre, Dicle University, Diyarbakir, Turkey from October 2008 to September 2010. The applications of Pulsed radiofrequency (PRF) were made under the guidance of C-arm fluoroscopy, local anaesthesia, and sedoanalgesia. The intervention types applied consisted of sacroiliac intraarticular, heel, sciatic nerve and impar ganglion Pulsed radiofrequency. Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) was used for pain assessment.Sacroiliac intraarticular PRF was applied to nine patients, impar ganglion PRF to eight patients, heel PRF to four patients and sciatic nerve PRF was applied to three patients. RESULTS: The mean age of the patients was 41.3 +/- 16.9 (range 15-77) years, 15 (62.5%) were females. The mean follow-up period was 8.5 +/- 5.4 months. A minimum 50% decrease was determined in the VAS scores of 16 (66.7%) patients compared to the initial values. The patients who had > or = 50% decrease in their VAS scores in the sacroiliac group was 55.6. This value was 75.0, 75.0 and 66.7 in the impar, heel and sciatic nerve groups respectively. No early- or late-term complications were observed in any of the patients. CONCLUSIONS: P Pulsed Radiofrequency implementation was found to be an effective and safe method for chronic pain treatment in our centre.