COOLED RFA FOR CERVICAL CHRONIC FACET JOINT PAIN USING A TRUE PERPENDICULAR APPROACH

The prevalence of cervical facet joint pain has been described to vary from 20% to 35% in the general population[1]. Cervical medial branch radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is an effective treatment for facetogenic pain in patients with successful outcome (>80% pain relief) after 2 consecutive medial branch blocks (MBB) [3]. Most of the published reports are using a posterior-to-anterior approach or a posterior oblique approach to target the medial branches (MB). At our institution we routinely perform cervical RFA using a perpendicular approach to the MB[2], as in our experience we find it is easier to perform and target the nerve location on the lateral mass. To note, there are no published peer-reviewed reports of using a perpendicular approach to perform cervical RFA[4].