Radiofrequency Ablation for Chronic Knee Pain: Local Experience at Tertiary Care

Abstract

Background: Osteoarthritis (OA) is one of the most common chronic type of arthritis affecting the adult population. Symptomatic knee OA affects 6% of the adult population and occurs in 10% of adult of 65 years and older. Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) has been used for the variety of chronic pain when conservative therapies failed. Genicular nerve RFA is a treatment modality for OA knee patients, especially when surgery is contraindicated due to advanced medical problems or when the patient is not willing to undergo surgery.
Methods: This retrospective observational study was conducted in the Pain Management Section, Department of Anaesthesiology, Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi. We included all patients who underwent diagnostic genicular nerve block for chronic knee pain between 1 June 2017 and 30 December 2018. Patients who underwent radiofrequency ablation of genicular nerves for chronic knee pain were recruited for this study. All enrolled patients were then followed for the next six months.
Results: Twenty-eight patients with chronic knee pain were selected to undergo radiofrequency ablation (RFA) of genicular nerves. Seventy-five percent of the patients were female, the average age of the patients were 62.89 (±10.96) years, and the mean body mass index was 30.29 (±4.88) kg/m 2. The mean numerical rating pain (NRS) score was 7.4 (±1.03) before pain intervention and 2.8 (±1.07) after RFA of genicular nerves, which was statistically significant (p=0.0005). In our patient cohort, knee RFA was found to be effective in 23 patients (82.14%).
Conclusion: This study reports 60-70% pain relief for six months in 82% of patients who underwent RFA of genicular nerves for severe osteoarthritis of knee joints.