A study presented at AAP 2015 San Antonio compares the effectiveness of HA injections to triamcinolone in improving pain and function in patients with lumbar ZJT arthropathy.
"Use of hyaluronate (HA) injections has been fairly well studied in peripheral joints, but there have been very few studies on their effect in lumbar zygapophyseal joints (ZJT). This study was a prospective double-blind randomized controlled trial comparing the effectiveness of ZJT injections of HA with steroid for pain relief, functional improvement and patient satisfaction for ZJT mediated chronic low back pain (CLBP). We enrolled 30 patients and fluoroscopically injected their bilateral L3-4, L4-5 and L5-S1 ZJTs with the study medication, and assessed outcomes at 1, 3 and 6 months after injection. We found that steroid and HA injections provide similar pain and functional benefits in patients with symptomatic lumbar ZJT arthropathy. We also found that HA provided statistically significant short- and long-term functional benefits and short-term pain improvement but steroid injections only provided statistically significant short-term functional benefit and no significant short- or long-term pain improvement compared to baseline levels of CLBP," said Thiru Annaswamy, MD, lead author.
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