The Value of Provocative Facet Blocking as a Predictor of Success in Lumbar Spine Fusion

Treatment of Failed Back Surgery Syndrome

“…Back pain could be due to the so–called facet syndrome; this syndrome, confirmed by facet block showing at least 70% relief of pain, can be resolved by postero‐lateral spinal arthrodesis(14). Nevertheless, this predictive value of facet block has not been confirmed in other studies(15).…”

Decision Making in Surgical Treatment of Chronic Low Back Pain: The performance of prognostic tests to select patients for lumbar spinal fusion

“…of the 22 selected full articles, six studies in which only patients with a positive index test had been selected for lumbar fusion, were excluded (bednar and raducan 1996;Lovely and rastogi 1997;Madan et al 2002;axelsson et al 2003;ohtori et al 2009;peng et al 2009). We also excluded six other studies, in which test accuracy could not be determined because only mean values of recovery were reported without proportions of patients with success or failure of treatment (esses and Moro 1993;christensen et al 1996;buttermann et al 1997;chataigner et al 1998;derby et al 1999;esposito et al 2006).…”

Cost-effectiveness and pain medicine

“…Although facet joint blocks are somewhat controversial in regard to long-term efficacy, Lovely and Rastogi [70] found that when used prospectively, facet blocks successfully predicted outcome [71] in patients who underwent subsequent posterior lumbar interbody fusions. In another study of lumbar medial branch blocks, Dreyfuss et al [72] noted that dorsal medial branch blocks should always be performed with radiographic contrast media for maximum precision.…”