Review of current pain management in patients with lumbosacral transitional vertebrae

Abstract

Pain in patients with transitional lumbosacral vertebrae is managed with surgical and non-surgical treatment. The non-surgical treatment involves techniques of traditional oriental medicine, manual therapy, physiotherapeutic procedures, and pharmacological blockade. Surgical interventions include resection of the pseudarthrosis, minimally invasive endoscopic surgery, radiofrequency ablation, and interbody fusion. The paper presents immediate and, in some cases, long-term outcomes, the causes of unsatisfactory outcomes and complications. The relevance of the study stems from the high prevalence of lumbosacral transitional vertebrae in the population, and, moreover, the lack of unified, generally accepted algorithms in choosing individual treatment, based on the history of patients, their age, as well as concomitant dystrophic changes of the superior spinal motion segments.