Laser osteoperforation of lumbar facet joints: experimental study on mini pigs

Abstract

Lumbar pain holds one of the leading positions of prevalence in the world. The common cause of vertebrogenic pain syndrome is spondylarthrosis. Conservative management of spondylarthrosis does not consistently provide an evident therapeutic effect. Open surgical treatment of spondylarthrosis also has a number of disadvantages due to a high risk of postoperative complications and high injury rate. Experimental determination of optimal operational modes of the devices for laser osteoperforation of lumbar facet joints was the purpose of this study. The experiment was performed in March 2020. Within the experiment, laser osteoperforation of lumbar facet joints was performed in experimental animals (mini pigs) with simultaneous measurement of the temperature on the surface and within the tissue and with further histological examination of bone material. The Ethics Committee Approval for the experiment was preliminarily obtained. The highest temperature of 79 °С was registered while performing open laser osteoperforation of the facet joint. Eventually, the following optimal operational modes of laser devices were determined: 2.0 W in continuous mode for radiation with the wavelength of 0.97 µm, and 5.0 W in pulse-periodic mode for radiation with the wavelength of 1.56 µm at the pulse length of 100.0 ms and the pause length of 50.0 ms. Histological examination results were obtained. The optimal modes of laser exposure while performing osteoperforation of facet joints were experimentally worked through and determined, which was further proven by the histological examination data. It makes sense to continue the exploratory development to implement the method in clinical practice.