927 - A Systematic Review on the Short Term Efficacy of Nucleoplasty for the Treatment of Cervical Pain Secondary to Cervical Disc Herniation

Objectives: To uncover and analyze the existing literature on Nucleoplasty to determine its efficacy and safety as an alternative to the current, more invasive, standards for treatment of cervical disc herniation.

Design: This systematic review was conducted in accordance with PRISMA 2020 guidelines, compiling all available literature on the use of Nucleoplasty for the treatment of pain secondary to cervical disc herniation. Through searching the PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Cochrane, and Web of Science databases, we identified seven studies (n=568) that met our inclusion criteria. Primary outcomes were pain relief and functionality improvement, assessed with standardized scoring methods (VAS, NRS).

Results: Pooled analysis revealed significant reduction in cervical/discogenic pain after nucleoplasty (pooled effect size: 3.61, 95% CI 1.90-5.32, p< 0.001). Subgroup analysis focusing on radicular pain yielded an effect size of 4.33 (95% CI 2.56-6.11, p< 0.001).

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that nucleoplasty as a treatment for radicular pain secondary to cervical disc herniation that is noninferior in terms of both efficacy and safety to current methods like anterior cervical discectomy in the short term: there was a significant improvement in pain across all studies. However, further research needs to be done exploring the long-term efficacy of this treatment as the follow-up period for most nucleoplasty trials up until now have been limited to less than a year.