ReviewInterventional pain medicine2023
Systemic steroids for cervical radicular pain: A systematic review.
Review in Interventional pain medicine, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- [Cervical disc herniation : Symptomatology, diagnostics, therapy].Orthopadie (Heidelberg, Germany) · 2025Review
- [Conservative therapy for lumbar disc herniation].Orthopadie (Heidelberg, Germany) · 2024Review
- Corticosteroids for radicular pain: Systemic or epidural?Interventional pain medicine · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Objective: Determine the effectiveness of systemic steroids for the treatment of cervical radicular pain. Data sources: We identified articles from two electronic databases (PubMed and Ovid Medline) and previously known articles. Study selection: We combined (using the Boolean Operator "AND") the following search terms: "Steroid* and Cervical Radic*" or "Steroid* and Cervicobrachialgia". We applied the search to PubMed and Ovid Medline research databases for all studies up February 11, 2022. We included all published articles involving cervical radicular pain treated with systemic steroids among adult users (≥18 years old). We defined systemic steroids as steroid medication administered into the body excluding epidural or intra-articular injections. We excluded reviews and editorials. Data extraction: Information extracted from each study included: (1) study design; (2) characteristics of trial participants; (3) diagnostic criteria; (4) treatment intervention protocol; (5) outcome measure; and (6) follow-up time. Outcomes included the neck disability index (NDI) and patient reported pain. Data synthesis: 842 publications were identified, 7 were suitable for inclusion. The only level one study comparing oral steroid to placebo reported greater improvements of NDI (35.7 ± 21.4 versus 12.9 ± 10.2, P < 0.001) and NPRS (4.4 ± 2.7 versus 1.6 ± 1.2, P < 0.001), and higher success rates (76% [95% CI: 60-92%] vs 30% [95% CI: 14-46%]) in the oral steroid group compared to the placebo group. The only level one study comparing paraspinal intramuscular (IM) versus interlaminar (IL) epidural steroids reported worse outcomes in the IM group with a success rate of 35% [95% CI: 13-58%] at 1 week and 12% [95% CI: 0-27%] at one year in the IM group, compared to 76% [95% CI: 60-92%] at 1 week (p = 0.04) and 68% [95% CI: 50-86%] at one year (p = 0.0004) in the IL group (P < 0.0004). The Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool and GRADE system was used to assess bias and rate the overall evidence quality. Conclusions: Very limited evidence exists supporting treatment of cervical radicular pain with systemic steroids. Oral steroids can be considered as a reasonable conservative option based on one RCT, whereas IM steroids may be inferior to epidural steroids based on another RCT. Additional higher quality studies are needed.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.