Lumbar Interlaminar Epidural Injections

s reviewed n = 350 Abstracts excluded n = 252s excluded n = 252 Full manuscripts reviewed n = 90 Manuscripts considered for inclusion Systematic reviews = 8 Randomized trials = 20 Observational studies = 30 Full manuscripts not available n = 8 Pain Physician: January/February 2009:12:163-188 170 www.painphysicianjournal.com Randomized Trials Methodologic Quality Assessment Of the 20 randomized trials, 11 studies met inclusion criteria (107-111,115,116,122,123,125,126). Of these, 6 studies met the inclusion criteria to be included for methodological assessment (108-110,115,125,126). Reasons for exclusion were as follows: ♦ Serrao et al (112) was excluded as they studied the effects of subarachnoid and epidural midazolam. ♦ Two studies (117,118) were excluded since they focused on diabetic polyneuropathy and intractable post-herpetic neuralgia. ♦ Buchner et al (120) was excluded as they evaluated only inpatients. ♦ Multiple evaluations (107,111,113,114,116,121124) were excluded for lack of evaluation of longterm outcomes. Methodological quality criteria are illustrated in Table 6 showing all the randomized clinical trials evaluating the effectiveness of lumbar interlaminar epidural injections. The quality assessment criteria Table 6. Methodological assessment of randomized trials evaluating the effectiveness of lumbar interlaminar epidural injections. CRITERION WEIGHTED SCORE (points) Arden et al (126) Carette et al (108) Cuckler et al (110) WilsonMacDonald et al (125) Snoek et al (109) Ridley et al (115)