DSA-guided ozone oxidative ablation for lumbar disc herniation

The traditional Chinese medicine treatment for lumbar disc herniation is conservative treatment, including physiotherapy, massage, acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, etc. Surgical treatment was firstly carried out in the United Kingdom and New Zealand in the 1930s, and after several decades of continuous improvement and development, surgical treatment has become an important means of treating lumbar disc herniation. However, surgery has obvious defects, such as high risk, high cost, and unsatisfactory effective rate of cure, etc. In the mid-1990s, some Italian medical experts took the lead in Europe to implement a new safe treatment method – “O3 intervertebral disc and paravertebral space injection”, whose effective rate is as high as 0.5 percent, and which has been proven to be effective in treating herniated lumbar discs with a high rate of cure. O3 intervertebral disc and paravertebral space injection”, with an effective rate as high as 75% to 85%, has been commonly used in European countries. This treatment method has the advantages of easy operation, small trauma, high safety, no toxic side effects and low cost compared with the traditional method. The First Military Medical University (now Southern Medical University) introduced this technology into China for the first time in 2000, and has accumulated more than 1,000 clinical cases in China. According to foreign research results, O3 has obvious efficacy in treating lumbar disc herniation, especially for bulging and mild or moderate herniation combined with radicular compression symptoms. From the available information, the mechanism of lumbar intervertebral disc herniation leading to low back pain has four main doctrines: nerve mechanical compression, inflammation, autoimmunity and neurotransmitter theory. Ozone is a colorless gas with a peculiar odor, which is extremely unstable and has strong oxidizing properties. o3’s mechanism of action is not yet well understood. Animal experiments conducted by Prof. He Xiaofeng of Southern Medical University have clearly shown that O3 injection can rapidly oxidize the proteoglycans in the nucleus pulposus (NPS), causing the NPS to decrease in osmotic pressure and lose water, and then undergo denaturation, desiccation, necrosis, and atrophy, which relieves nerve root compression and relieves the symptoms of low back and leg pain[1]~[2] . In fact, nerve root compression does not cause radicular pain in all cases, and CT and MRI imaging has revealed disc herniation in 20% to 30% of subjects without any history of pain. In recent years, with the in-depth study of the anatomy and physiology of the nerve root, it is believed that mechanical compression of the nerve root is not directly related to the production of radicular pain, and that aseptic inflammation of the nerve root, trophic disorders of the nerve root, and nerve root conduction damage may be the direct cause of low back pain, and that only those nerve roots that are already involved or inflamed can induce radicular pain under compression or pulling conditions. The protruding nucleus pulposus can cause an inflammatory reaction in the surrounding tissues. In addition, the mature nucleus pulposus is isolated from the body’s immune system by the mechanical barrier closure of the annulus fibrosus and the cartilaginous plate, which stimulates the body’s immune system to generate an autoimmune response in the event of a ruptured disc resulting in a prolapsed nucleus pulposus. The immune response can cause a neuroinflammatory reaction through the enzyme products of inflammatory mediators, and at the same time, it can cause mechanical stimulation to lower the threshold of the injury receptors, so that low back pain occurs in the physiological immune state, which means that an important pathway of autoimmune response is to act as an injury through the inflammatory response [3]. Ozone therapy is different from any previous treatments and is biologically characterized. It does not cause mechanical, high-temperature, or chemical side damage in the body, and thus does not produce serious complications or sequelae. In addition to accomplishing the same therapeutic effects, O3 also eliminates inflammation outside the intervertebral disc, prevents infection, and avoids complications. Therefore, the dual therapeutic effect of O3 injection on intra and extra discs is its unique therapeutic feature, which makes it suitable for the treatment of more complex patients.O3 injection therapy can treat multiple diseased discs at the same time without causing obvious adverse effects, and it is a safe and effective method.