Efficacy and Safety of Conventional and Cooled Radiofrequency Ablation in Patients with Advanced Knee Osteoarthritis: A Prospective, Randomized, Double-blind Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: In knee osteoarthritis (KOA), cooled radiofrequency ablation (C-RFA) and conventional radiofrequency ablation (Conv-RFA) are seldom compared directly, and long-term outcome is unclear. Aim: The aim is to compare the efficacy and safety of C-RFA and Conv-RFA in patients with Kellgren and Lawrence grade ≥3. Settings and Design: This prospective, randomized, double-blind study was performed over 30 months (October 2020 to March 2023) with 12 months follow-up in the Department of Pain Medicine. Materials and Methods: The study included 30 patients each in C-RFA and Conv-RFA groups. The outcomes were assessed at baseline, 3, 6, and 12 months and included pain relief (Visual Analogue Scale [VAS] score), rescue analgesic use, functional improvement (Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index [WOMAC] scores), and adverse events. Results: At 12 months, both C-RFA and Conv-RFA groups had a significant reduction in VAS score and analgesic use as well as an improvement in WOMAC score ( P < 0.0001). In the C-RFA group, VAS score and analgesic use decreased, while WOMAC score improved significantly at 3, 6, and 12 months compared to baseline ( P < 0.0001). At corresponding intervals, similar changes were observed in the Conv-RFA group at all the intervals, except no significant reduction in VAS score at 12 months ( P = 0.900). The groups had comparable VAS and WOMAC scores at baseline, 3, and 6 months; however, at 12 months, the VAS score decreased significantly and the WOMAC score improved significantly in C-RFA groups ( P < 0.0001). Conclusions: C-RFA provided significantly greater and prolonged pain relief and functional improvement in patients with KL grade III–IV KOA, and thus is superior to Conv-RFA.
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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 | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 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".