Introduction: Chronic axial low back pain due to zygapophysial joint arthropathy is best diagnosed via lumbar medial branch block (MBB). However, the paradigm by which MBB is used to select patients for lumbar radiofrequency neurotomy (RFN) is contested. Dual diagnostic lumbar MBB with a minimum of ≥80% pain relief to diagnose lumbar zygapophysial joint pain are accepted by some Medicare Local Coverage Determination (LCD) as the method for selecting patients for RFN for the management of lumbar zygapophysial joint pain. However, some argue that dual diagnostic MBB and the ≥80% pain relief threshold lack utility in clinical practice, given that those that progress from MBB1 to MBB2 will then flow from MBB2 to RFN without fail.

Study: Pragmatic retrospective clinical audit.

Objective: Does clinical practice of dual diagnostic lumbar MBBs and an ≥80% pain improvement diagnostic threshold reduce patient eligibility for RFN after both MBB1 and MBB2?

Results: Using dual diagnostic lumbar MBBs and an ≥80% pain improvement diagnostic threshold, 90/167 (54%, 95% CI 46-61%) patients successfully progressed from MBB1 to MBB2. Of those 90 patients, 66 patients (73%, 95% CI 64-82%) successfully progressed from MBB2 to RFN. Both MBB1 and MBB2 impacted the eligibility of the progression of 77/167 (46%, 95% CI 39-54%) patients and 24/90 patients (27%, 95% CI 18-36%), respectively. An additional sub-cohort analysis which included all the patients from the ≥80% pain relief cohort, and those who progressed at the discretion of the providers with 50-79% relief revealed that 124/167 patients (74%, 95% CI 68-81%) successfully progressed from MBB1 to MBB2. Of those 124 patients, 99 patients (80%, 95% CI 73-87%) progressed from MBB2 to RFN. In this laxer criteria cohort, MBB1 and MBB2 impacted the eligibility of the progression of 43/167 patients (26%, 95% CI 19-32%) and 25/124 patients (20%, 95% CI 13-27%), respectively.

Conclusion: MBB1 and MBB2 both filtered patients from progression to lumbar RFN using dual MBBs with an ≥80% pain relief criteria. It also held true when using a more relaxed pain relief selection criterion as well. Dual MBB's and ≥80% pain improvement criteria as a selection paradigm led to half as many lumbar RFNs being performed when compared to a single MBB and ≥80% pain improvement criteria. In theory, a more rigid selection paradigm treats less patients but exposes fewer to unnecessary RFNs while a laxer selection paradigm treats more patients but exposes more to unnecessary RFNs.