Papers of the Week

Low back pain, radicular leg pain, and lumbar spinal stenosis are the most common of all chronic pain disorders. Discogenic pain is related to distress of annular fibers and tears, whereas spinal stenosis is related to reduction of the spinal canal dimensions and compression of the neural elements; radicular pain is mainly related to disc herniation and is initially managed conservatively. The percutaneous minimally invasive approach in discogenic and radicular pain is designed to reduce the volume of the nucleus pulposus in patients with failure of medical and physical treatment prolonged for at least 6 weeks.