BACKGROUND Lumbar transforaminal epidural injections have been utilized in the treatment of radicular pain with proven success. It was postulated that interlaminar epidural injections result in a dorsal flow of contrast while transforaminal epidural steroid injections showed good ventral flow limited to one single spinal motion segment. There have been no published studies evaluating epidurogra...

Pain Physician Vol. 8, No. 3, 2005 To the Editor: Over the past few years, multiple articles have appeared on the subject of transforaminal epidural steroid injections. Reports of devastating neurological injuries, including death and paraplegia, fuel concern for transforaminal epidural injections (1-5). There is also a widely-held belief that many cases of severe spinal cord injury have gone u...

BACKGROUND Chronic lower back pain with or without radiculopathy represents an important medical, social, and economic problem. Many treatment modalities and techniques, including surgery and epidural administration of steroids, have been used to manage this pain. Hypertonic saline, which has been used as an adjunct to percutaneous epidural adhesiolysis, can also be injected via a transforamina...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to compare the sharp and blunt needles in order to determine the incidence of complications during transforaminal anterior epidural steroid injections. METHODS In this retrospective study, 185 cases that undergo transforaminal epidural steroid injection with sharp or blunt needles were evaluated between June 2004 and December 2008. Patients age, sex, diagn...

STUDY DESIGN A retrospective clinical study. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the efficacy and safety of transforaminal decompression and interbody fusion in the treatment of thoracolumbar fracture and dislocation with spinal cord injury. METHODS Twenty-six spinal cord injured patients with thoracolumbar fracture and dislocation were treated by transforaminal decompression and interbody fusion. The op...

BACKGROUND Given the risk of paralysis associated with cervical transforaminal injection, is it time to reconsider transforaminal injections of the lumbar spine? Arguments for discontinuing lumbar injections have been discussed in the anesthesia literature, raising concern about the risks of epidural steroid injections (ESIs). METHODS In a 47-year-old man, paraplegia of the lower extremities ...

OBJECTIVE To assess the usage patterns of epidural injections for chronic spinal pain in the fee-for-service (FFS) Medicare population from 2000 to 2014 in the USA. DESIGN A retrospective cohort. METHODS The descriptive analysis of the administrative database from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Physician/Supplier Procedure Summary (PSPS) master data from 2000 to 2014 was p...

BACKGROUND Lumbar transforaminal epidural injections are commonly utilized to treat radicular pain due to intervertebral disc herniation. OBJECTIVE This study aims to determine if there was a major difference in effectiveness between particulate and nonparticulate corticosteroids for acute radicular pain due to lumbar disc herniation. DESIGN A multicenter, double blind, prospective, randomi...

BACKGROUND Epidural injection of corticosteroids is one of the most commonly used interventions in managing chronic spinal pain. However, there has been a lack of well-designed randomized, controlled studies to determine the effectiveness of epidural injections. Consequently, debate continues as to the value of epidural steroid injections in managing spinal pain. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the eff...

Objective. Many surgical approaches have been defined and implemented in the last few decades for thoracic disc herniations. The endoscopic foraminal approach in foraminal, lateral, and far lateral disc hernias is a contemporary minimal invasive approach. This study was performed to show that the approach is possible using the microscope without an endoscope, and even the intervention on the di...