What is Geniculate Nerve Radiofrequency Ablation?
Let’s talk about a new procedure that we are doing for knee pain. It is something patients might be able to try before having their joint replaced. It’s called Geniculate Nerve Radiofrequency Ablation. Relative to a lot of procedures that we do, this is a fairly new one. We have been having excellent outcomes for our patients who get the procedure done.
This procedure is for patients who have pain in their knee, primarily because of arthritis, but it can help with any kind of knee pain. The usual patient who gets this procedure is someone with osteoarthritis in the knee and has been offered a knee replacement, but they are not ready to get it done.
Knee replacements work exceptionally well, but they have a certain amount of time in which they will work and then you will need to replace the joint again. Most patients try to get the replacement done late enough in life so that they can go through one surgery and not have to have it over and over.
Who is a candidate for this procedure? It is really somebody who needs a joint replacement
It could be someone who is too young to have a knee replacement done
It could be somebody who refuses a joint replacement just because they do not want it.
It could be somebody who is too old or not healthy enough to have a joint replacement.
It could be somebody who had a joint replacement, and it did not work well, or it is at end of life and they need to have another one put in.
What is involved in this procedure?
We will have the patient come to our clinic and we will then perform what is called a Geniculate Nerve Block to about three to four nerves. We inject a long acting anesthetic to the nerves, and then we send you home with what we call a pain diary to document how much relief you had.
It is important to realize that the blocks only give you temporary relief for about four to six hours. Your pain will then come back.
If you show a significant increase in function, accompanied with a decrease in pain, we will then perform a Geniculate Nerve Ablation. This is a minimally invasive nonsurgical procedure where we apply heat to the nerves in order to decrease the transmission of pain signals.
The relief is not instant. After the procedure, it can often take weeks or even up to a month before you feel relief, but the relief will last about 8 to 12 months.
At which point we will just perform the procedure again. It is important to realize that this procedure is nonsurgical and is entirely performed with needles. It's very safe and we do not use any drugs in this procedure other than local anesthetics. There really are no side effects. Most patients stay with only some slight soreness after the procedure.
I hope this blog was informative, and I look forward to bringing you more insightful blogs in the future. Please visit our YouTube page, where you can learn more about the various treatments Chicago Sports and Spine offers.
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