The effectiveness of thoracic medial branch radiofrequency ablation using a three-tined electrode: A real-world cross-sectional cohort study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Thoracic medial branch radiofrequency ablation (TMBRFA) is used to treat chronic thoracic spine pain, but data regarding its effectiveness and technique remain limited. Objectives: Evaluate outcomes of TMBRFA using a three-tined electrode in patients with thoracic facet joint pain. Methods: Consecutive patients who underwent first-time TMBRFA at a single tertiary academic center between 2022 and 2024 were identified and contacted for follow-up via standardized telephone survey at ≥6 months post-procedure. Baseline demographic and clinical data were extracted from electronic medical records. Outcomes included the proportions of patients with ≥50% numerical rating scale (NRS) pain score reduction, ≥2-point NRS reduction, and Patient Global Impression of Change (PGIC) scores ≥6 (indicating at least "much improved"). Mean NRS pain score reduction and changes in opioid use from baseline were also assessed. Results: Outcomes were successfully collected from 11 patients. At a mean follow-up of 20.6 ± 7.6 months, 36.4% (95%CI: 15.2-64.6) and 45.5% (95%CI: 21.3-72.0) of patients reported ≥50% and ≥2-point NRS reductions, respectively, with 54.6% (95%CI: 28.0-78.7) reporting PGIC scores ≥6. Mean NRS pain score reduction was 1.9 ± 2.7 points. Two patients had ceased using opioids at follow-up, representing a proportional decrease of 18.2% compared to baseline. Conclusion: In this cohort, approximately half of patients who underwent first-time TMBRFA with a three-tined electrode experienced clinically meaningful pain relief and perceived overall improvement at an average follow-up of nearly 2 years. Larger, prospective studies are needed to corroborate these findings.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| 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".