Bipolar Versus Unipolar Intraarticular PulsedRadiofrequency Thermocoagulation in ChronicKnee Pain Treatment: A Prospective RandomizedTrial
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Chronic knee pain is a major widespread problem causing significant impairment of daily function. Pulsed radiofrequency has been shown to reduce severe chronic joint pain as a non-pharmacological and less invasive treatment method. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to compare the effectiveness of unipolar and bipolar intraarticular pulsed radiofrequency methods in chronic knee pain control. STUDY DESIGN: Prospective, randomized, double-blind study. SETTING: Pain clinic in Cukurova University Faculty of Medicine. METHODS: One hundred patients, aged 20 - 70 years with grade 2 or 3 knee osteoarthritis were included in this study. Patients were randomly allocated into 2 groups to receive either unipolar (group U, n = 50) or bipolar (group B, n = 50) intraarticular pulsed radiofrequency (IAPRF) with a 45 V voltage, 2 Hz frequency, 42° C temperature, 10 msec pulse width, and 10 minute duration. We recorded visual analog scale (VAS) and Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index LK 3.1WOMAC (Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index LK 3.1) scores of patients at baseline and one, 4, and 12 weeks after the procedure. The primary outcome was the percentage of patients with ≥ 50% reduction in knee pain at 12 weeks after the procedure. RESULTS: There was a significant difference between the groups according to VAS scores at all post-intervention time points. In group B, 84% of patients, and in the group U, 50% of patients achieved at least 50% knee pain relief from the baseline to 3 months. In group B, WOMAC scores were significantly lower than the group U at one and 3 months. LIMITATIONS: Lack of long-term clinical results and supportive laboratory tests. CONCLUSION: Bipolar IAPRF is more advantageous in reducing chronic knee pain and functional recovery compared with unipolar IAPRF. Further studies with longer follow-up times, laboratory-based tests, and different generator settings are required to establish the clinical importance and well-defined mechanism of action of PRF. This study protocol was registered at clinicaltrials.gov (identifier: NCT02141529), on May 15, 2014. Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval date: January 16, 2014, and number: 26/9Key words: Chronic pain, intraarticular, knee joint, knee osteoarthritis, pain management, pulsed radiofrequency treatment, quality of life, recovery of function.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".