What if chronic low back pain could be essentially stopped? As you may have heard Low back pain (LBP) is the leading cause of time off work in the United States and the leading cause of disability worldwide. Chronic LBP is treated with an assortment of costly interventions, including medications, physical therapy, manipulative therapy, massage therapy, bracing, and injections. The chronic LBP results in many individuals being prescribed opioid analgesics with all the problems that leads to. None of these therapies are very effective treatment for the Chronic back pain population. Eventually patients seeking pain relief undergo fusion or disc replacement surgery with costly long rehabilitation time, and high complication and reoperation rates.
Spine care practitioners have thought the intervertebral disc was the source of most chronic LBP. However recent studies have shown that the vertebral endplate is the source of pain related to disc degeneration with pain transmitted via the nerve to the endplate the basivertebral nerve (BVN). The endplate degeneration results in the release of inflammatory mediators that sets up an escalating inflammatory response and the appearance of Modic changes at the vertebral endplates seen on MRI.
Knowing the endplate is the origin for Chronic LBP, a minimally invasive procedure called Intracept uses radiofrequency ablation for the Basivertebral nerve in the vertebral body. The procedure is a brief outpatient procedure that has no prolonged recovery. The procedure is a very safe one. Once ablated, these nerves no longer transmit pain signals.
Our best designed clinical trial prospectively randomized 225 chronic LBP patients that showed great pain relief and restored daily activity function immediately and at the 2-year and now the 5 year mark. 
This brief outpatient procedure has a very good safely profile and essentially has no required time off of work or recovery period. This is a remarkable success story for an outpatient procedure to successfully treat chronic low back pain. Please call us at 210-615-8600 if you are interested in stopping the chronic LBP once and for all.
