Radiofrequency Ablation To Treat Chronic Nerve Pain

Among the treatment options available for pain management is radiofrequency ablation.

“RFA is a minimally invasive means of interrupting pain signals to provide relief for patients with chronic pain,” said Dr. Lukasz Chebes, Pain Medicine of Evangelical and medical director of Pain Medicine at Evangelical Community Hospital. “It’s commonly used to treat painful conditions of the spine, like back pain or neck pain. It’s also used to treat peripheral joint pain, like knee pain. There are several applications.”

The typical approach is to do a targeted test injection to the small nerves that enervate the joints of the spine, said Dr. Ryan Ness, director of Pain Management at Geisinger Medical Center.

“If that works, even for a few days or a few weeks, we can sometimes go in and use a special needle that’s hooked up to a computer to send an electrical current to ablate that area,” he said. “The idea behind it is that it heats up that small area of nerve tissue and disconnects the circuitry, so to speak, and then that specific area will have some prolonged numbness, I guess you could say, from the procedure.”

Radiofrequency ablation is an attempt to give patients longer, sustained relief of that painful area. As with any invasive procedure, there are risks and potential complications, but RFA is considered a low risk procedure.

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Article from The Daily Item on September 7, 2021.