Letter to Editor: The Systematic Review of Interventional Minimally Invasive Treatments for Chronic Low Back Pain Caused by Lumbar Facet Joint Syndrome Provided Inaccurate Information

To the editor:

We read with interest the systematic review by Ambrosio et al. ¹ While the article appears to be well executed, the basic flaws in their analysis must be corrected. The authors included 2 publications by Manchikanti et al.^2,3 The important of 2-year follow-up of evaluation of lumbar facet joint nerve blocks in managing chronic low back pain. This was a randomized, double blind controlled trial published in 2010. The second article ² was related to effectiveness of lumbar facet joint nerve blocks in chronic low back pain published in 2001. ² The 2010 article was well designed and well performed. ² Authors have mistaken both studies as intraarticular injections while they are facet joint nerve blocks. In addition, they also utilized a study by Civelek et al. ⁴ which is also a study of facet joint nerve blocks and they have described as intraarticular injections.

This misclassification results in inappropriate evidence synthesis, and, finally, inappropriate conclusions of the procedures.

Finally, risk of bias and domains appear to be inaccurate as the randomized controlled trial by Manchikanti et al ² performed appropriate randomization.