Bone scans are not very useful for managing suspected facet joint pain. A literature review found 25 papers on using bone scans to examine facet joints and correlate results with response to steroid injections, but most were excluded for being reviews, irrelevant, or lacking treatment information. The 4 remaining studies showed bone scans are more of a flirt than true love for pain management, as they did not strongly correlate with treatment response.

1. BACK PAIN + BONE SCAN = LOVE ?
EBS
David Bervini
MD, MAdvSurg
Australian School of Advanced Medicine
1.8.2013

2. Question
• Is bone scan a useful adjunct in the
management of suspected symptomatic facet
joints arthropathy?
• Do bone scan results correlate well with
response to facet joints steroid injection?

3. PICO
• P facet joints
• I bone scan
• C no bone scan
• O pain management

4. Medline

5. EMBASE

6. Medline (18) + EMBASE (12) =
25 eligible papers

7. Scopus

8. • Tot 25 eligible papers (Medline and EMBASE)
• Papers excluded
– 8 review papers
– 2 not relevant
– 9 studies about diagnosis, no informations about ttt
4 papers
(same as in Scopus)

9. Results

10. Conclusion
More a flirt than true love