Abstract

Background: Minimally-invasive treatments of degenerative disc disease are becoming more popular. Various intra-discal procedures have been introduced since many years ago, with variable outcome. Discogel has been recently introduced with promising results.

Purpose: To present our initial experience with intra-discal injection of Discogel in Iranian patients, to evaluate its efficacy and safety.

Material and Methods: 100 Patients with symptomatic lumbar or cervical disc herniation who failed conservative nonsurgical treatment, were included into the study. Discogel was injected under controlled fluoroscopic/CT scan guidance using standardized techniques. For patient evaluation, regular follow ups were carried out for assessing pain intensity on visual analog scale (VAS).

Results: The procedure lasted from 15 to 90 minutes depend on the number of levels that must be injected, and the whole admission took from 3 to 24 hours. Median VAS score was 10 before injection, which dropped to 5 at 1 week post-injection, and 0 at 1 month post- injection. Only 3 patient reported significant remaining pain at 1 months of follow- up that underwent operation intervention. No complications were noted.

Conclusion: This preliminary study shows efficacy and safety of Discogel intradiscal injection in selected cases. Further long-term follow-up is needed to evaluate the results.

Keywords: Discogel; Disc Herniation; Radiopaque Gelified Ethanol

References

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Citation

Citation: Mohammad Reza Babaei., et al. “Percutaneous Treatment of Degenerative Disc Disease with Radiopaque Gelified Ethanol (Discogel); Initial Experience in Iran”. Acta Scientific Cancer Biology 5.1 (2021): 14-17.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2021 Mohammad Reza Babaei., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.