Interventional pain management for spinal disorders: a review of injection techniques.

Chronic spinal pain has a high prevalence and a severe economic, societal and health impact. In the last decades the practice and research of interventional techniques for the diagnosis and treatment of spinal pain has increased sharply. The level of evidence of the most common techniques is well documented. With image-guided precise diagnostic blocks it is possible to identify the source of chronic spinal pain in well over 60% of the cases. Nonsurgical specialties such as PM&R increasingly resort to the possibilities of interventional pain management for musculoskeletal disorders. For many forms of spinal pain there is at least fair evidence for long-term pain relief after a guided therapeutic injection often reducing the intake of analgesic medication or the need for surgery. This review focuses on the evidence, the application spectrum and special considerations of injection techniques for the treatment of spinal disorders.