Long-term clinical outcomes of genicular nerve radiofrequency ablation for chronic knee pain using a three-tined electrode for expanded nerve capture
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objective: Genicular nerve radiofrequency ablation (GNRFA) is an effective treatment option for chronic knee pain in native knee osteoarthritis and total knee arthroplasty (TKA) patients. Recent dissections have revealed significant variability in typical genicular nerve targets and other sensory nerves not included in previous studies. Early, short-term results suggest that more complete sensory denervation with GNRFA may result in more significant pain reduction; however, no long-term clinical outcome exists. We aim to present long-term clinical outcomes after an expanded GNRFA technique with a three-tined radiofrequency cannula. Methods: Eleven consecutive patients with ≥6 months of knee pain underwent an expanded GNRFA protocol targeting the superomedial (SMGN), superolateral (SLGN), inferomedial genicular nerves (IMGN), in addition to the nerves to vastus medialis (NVM), lateralis (NVL), and intermedius (NVI). Long-term pain and impression of change outcomes were collected in a cross-sectional fashion. Results: At ≥18 months (mean 24 months) post-GNRFA, 91% (95% CI = 59, 100%), 73% (95% CI = 46, 99%), and 9% (95% CI = 0, 26%) of patients reported ≥50%, ≥80%, and 100% pain relief, respectively. Additionally, 27% (95% CI = 1, 54%) and 64% (95% CI = 35, 92%) of individuals reported a PGIC score of 6 ("much improved") and 7 ("very much improved"), respectively. The proportion of individuals who reported the MCID for the PGIC (score of ≥6) was 91% (95% CI = 59, 100%). There were no adverse events reported amongst the patients in this cohort. No patients progressed to surgery. Conclusion: This single-arm cohort suggests that an expanded GNRFA protocol targeting SMGN, SLGN, IMGN, NVM, NVL, and NVI nerves with a three-tined electrode, resulted in significant long-term (≥18 months) improvements in pain and patient-perceived global improvement. Large, head-to-head trials are needed to establish whether this GNRFA protocol is superior to those used in previous clinical studies and those currently used more commonly in practice.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
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 teacher head, 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".