Lumbar Transforaminal Injection of Steroids versus Platelet-Rich Plasma for Prolapse Lumbar Intervertebral Disc with Radiculopathy: A Randomized Double-Blind Controlled Pilot Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
STUDY DESIGN: Double-blind randomized controlled pilot study. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to compare outcomes of steroids with autologous platelet-rich plasma (PRP) administered by lumbar transforaminal injection (LTI) in patients with lumbar radiculopathy. OVERVIEW OF LITERATURE: Degenerative disc disease of the lumbar spine is one of the most common conditions managed by spine surgeons in routine practice. Once conservative management fails, LTI is diagnostic and often therapeutic. Steroids are the gold standard drug used for LTI but have limitations and side effects. METHODS: In this single-center double-blind randomized controlled pilot study, 46 patients were recruited and randomized by the lottery method. The Visual Analog Scale (VAS) for leg pain, modified Oswestry Disability Index (mODI), and Short-Form 12 (SF-12) were assessed at 1 week, 3 weeks, 6 weeks, 6 months, and 1 year. RESULTS: Both groups were comparable in terms of demographics, preprocedure VAS scores, mODI, and SF-12 scores (p=0.52). At the 1-week follow-up, the steroid group had significantly better improvement than the PRP group (p=0.0001). At the 3-week follow-up, both groups showed comparable outcomes; however, the PRP group had better symptom improvement. At 6 weeks and 6 months, the PRP group had better outcomes (VAS, p<0.0001; ODI, p=0.02; SF-12, p=0.002). Moreover, 17 and 16 patients in the steroid and PRP groups underwent repeat LTI with steroids or surgery because of pain recurrence during follow-up. At 1 year, no difference in outcomes was observed. CONCLUSIONS: PRP may be a useful alternative to steroids for LTI in lumbar radiculopathy. Although improvement was delayed and 1-year outcomes were comparable, the 6-week and 6-month outcomes were better with PRP than with LTI. Multiple PRP injections may be beneficial because of its autologous nature. However, further studies with a larger number of participants, longer follow-up, and repeat LTIs are warranted to draw definite conclusions.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 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 | 0.001 |
| 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".