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Chronic Pain Patients Need a Breakthrough

Patients with chronic neck or back pain try many different treatments in an effort to reduce pain. When nerve damage is part of the problem, pain relief is even more complex. Treatment with prescription drugs is less than satisfactory. Two-thirds of all patients don't get even moderate pain relief.

Surgery to heat the nerve tissue and cut off painful signals to the brain doesn't work either. According to recent studies, the patient can end up with more pain as the nervous system finds ways around the nerve that was destroyed.

In this editorial, Dr. T. S. Jensen from the Department of Neurology and Pain Research Center in Denmark offers a review of studies done and an opinion of a new treatment. The new treatment proposed for chronic pain is called pulsed radiofrequency (PRF).

PRF delivers short lasting pulses of electrical currents. The voltage is high enough to be in the radiofrequency range. PRF heats (but does not destroy) the nerve tissue. This fact makes it a non-destructive procedure. How it works to reduce pain remains unknown at this time.

Dr. Jensen reports that early studies show good short-term results of PRF. He offers the opinion that there isn't enough evidence (yet) to use PRF routinely for chronic neck pain. Further research is needed to find out the best way to use PRF and how it works.

References: Troels S. Jensen. Pulsed Radiofrequency: A Novel Treatment for Chronic Cervical Radicular Pain? [Editorial] In Pain. January 2007. Vol. 127. No. 1-2. Pp. 3-4.

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