The Impact of Hematological Parameters on Pain Relief After Transforaminal Epidural Steroid Injection

Objective: Since inflammation plays an important role in radiculopathies, and that neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and platelet/lymphocyte ratios (PLR) are known to be associated with inflammation, the effects of these values on transforaminal epidural steroid injections (TFESI) in patients with lumbar radiculopathy were investigated. Methods: A total of 101 patients, who were diagnosed with lumbar radiculopathy and underwent TFESI, were retrospectively analyzed. Therapeutic success was considered to be a ≥ 50% decrease in visual analog scale (VAS) scores one month after TFESI. The patients in the study were placed in two groups according to whether their treatment was successful or unsuccessful, according to this criteria, and hemogram parameters in the two groups were then compared. Results: The study included 46 female and 55 male patients with a mean age of 49.43 ± 13.29. The median duration of symptoms was 3.0 (3.0-8.0) months. It was found that there was no significant difference between the groups in terms of neutrophil, lymphocyte, monocyte, platelet counts, mean plazma volümü (MPV), kırmızı hücre dağılım genişliği (RDW), platelet/ lenfosit oranı (PLR), sistemik inflamatuar indeks (SII), sedimentation, and C-reactive protein (CRP), although it was observed that there were significant increases in NLR in the successful group [2.34 (1.70-3.17)], as compared to the unsuccessful group [1.79 (1.51-2.57)] (p=0.026). Conclusion: Neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio is able to predict the response to TFESI treatment in patients with lumbar radiculopathy, in that patients with a higher NLR demonstrate a better response. Keywords: Hemogram parameters, inflammation, neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio, lumbar disc herniation, lumbar radiculopathy