Outcomes of Lumbar Disc Herniation Treatment using Medication Method Coupled with Epidural Hydrocortisone Injection

Author(s): Thanh-Hoang Nguyen, Quang-Tri Lê

Background: Evaluation of lumbar disc herniation treatment outcome using medication method coupled with epidural hydrocortisone injection.

Methods: Description, clinical experiment with the control group, supervision, and evaluation on 62 patients before treatment, 15 days after surgery and 30 days after treatment, in 7A Military Hospital (Ho Chi Minh City, VietNam) from November 2015 to June 2016. Group I (control) included 31 patients treated with essential medication. Group II (experiments) included 31 patients treated with essential medication plus lumbar epidural injection.

Results: At 30 days after treatment 48.4% experiment patients reported no pain (in comparison with 32.3% control ones), 67.7% experiments reported improvement in lumbar flexion (38.7% controls), 64.5% experiments reported great improvement in Lasegue test (38.7%). Flexion, extension, adduction, and rotation were significantly better improved in experiments than in controls. Daily function improvement in experiments (58.1%) was sharply better than controls (19.4%). In general, 80.7% experiments got “very good” treatment outcome, compared with 67.7% controls.

Conclusions: The experiment group got significantly better treatment outcomes than the control group.