Evidence review finds low-certainty pain reduction from nucleoplasty in patients with cervical disc herniation, highlighting insufficient evidence to support clinical adoption.
Compared to conservative treatment, low-certainty evidence showed that nucleoplasty may result in a large reduction in pain and no difference in neck-related function at short-term follow-up. For the other comparisons (pulsed radiofrequency of the dorsal root ganglion, discectomy), there was low to very low-certainty evidence for little to no effect of nucleoplasty on pain, neck-related function, recovery or adverse events. No serious complications occurred in the nucleoplasty or comparison groups. There is insufficient evidence to support the use of nucleoplasty for people with radicular pain due to disc herniation. There is a need for sufficiently powered, well-designed RCTs.
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Rooij et al. (2025) studied this question.
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