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Record W4413910295 · doi:10.1093/pm/pnaf122

The effectiveness of basivertebral nerve radiofrequency ablation for the treatment of vertebrogenic low back pain: 1-year results of a prospective real-world cohort study

2025· article· en· W4413910295 on OpenAlexaff
Zachary L. McCormick, Alexandra E. Fogarty, Aaron Conger, Taylor Burnham, Richard Kendall, Blake Dickenson, Napatpaphan Kanjanapanang, Tim Curtis, Hasan Sen, Allison Glinka Przybysz, Tyler Clark, Katharine A Smolinski, Graham Wagner, Masaru Teramoto, Amanda Cooper

Bibliographic record

VenuePain Medicine · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldMedicine
TopicSpine and Intervertebral Disc Pathology
Canadian institutionsAlberta Health Services
FundersRelievant MedsystemsBoston Scientific Corporation
KeywordsMedicineOswestry Disability IndexRadiofrequency ablationLow back painPhysical therapyProspective cohort studyClinical endpointModic changesCohortPopulationRandomized controlled trialSurgeryInternal medicineAblation

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA: Multiple clinical trials have demonstrated the effectiveness of intraosseous basivertebral nerve radiofrequency ablation (BVNA) for treating chronic vertebrogenic low back pain (vLBP). Few studies have evaluated the effectiveness in a real-world population. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the effectiveness of BVNA for vLBP in a real-world population. METHODS: A single-arm prospective cohort study of patients with LBP ≥ 6 months and Type 1 or Type 2 Modic changes on MRI. The primary outcome was mean improvement in Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) post-BVNA. Secondary outcomes included the proportion of participants with (1) ≥30% and ≥15-point ODI improvements, (2) ≥2-point and ≥50% reductions in pain on Numerical Rating Scale (NRS), and (3) ≥ "much improved" on Patient Global Impression of Change (PGIC) at 3- and 12-month follow-up. RESULTS: In total, 60 participants were included (mean age 57.0 ± 13.4 years; 45.0% female). Mean ODI score improvement was 13.9 ± 18.7 and 14.0 ± 15.7 points at 3- and 12-month follow-up, respectively. At 12 months, 52.8% (95% CI, 39.7-65.6) of participants reported ≥30% ODI improvement and 39.6% (95% CI, 27.6-53.1) of participants reported ≥15-point improvement in ODI. Twelve-month responder rates for ≥2-point and ≥50% NRS improvement were 67.9% (95% CI, 54.5-78.9) and 49.1% (95% CI, 36.1-62.1). Moreover, 54.7% (95% CI, 41.5-67.3) of participants reported being "much or very much improved" on the PGIC at 12 months. DISCUSSION/CONCLUSION: In this real-world cohort, over half of participants with vLBP experienced clinically meaningful improvements in pain and function at 12-month post-BVNA. TRIAL REGISTRATION DETAILS: ClinicalTrials.gov (original study: NCT04449835; continuation study: NCT05660512); [original study: June 25, 2020; continuation study: December 13, 2022].

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not 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.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.006
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.003
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: Observational
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.030
Threshold uncertainty score0.445

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0060.003
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.001
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

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.

Opus teacher head0.015
GPT teacher head0.312
Teacher spread0.297 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

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".

Quick stats

Citations10
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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