Predictability of the effects of facet joint infiltration in the degenerate lumbar spine when assessing MRI scans

Table 1 Correlation analysis of radiomorphometric measurements or qualitative classifications and pain relief after facet joint injection

Variable	Kendall’s tau	p value
Qualitative measurements
Facet joint degeneration (Weishaupt) [20]	− 0.020	0.866
Neuroforaminal stenosis (Lee) [58]	− 0.190	0.103
Spinal canal stenosis (Schizas) [30]	0.036	0.767
Quantitative measurements
Posterior disc height [21]	0.133	0.195
Neuroforaminal antero-posterior distance [22]	− 0.007	0.946
Neuroforaminal cross-sectional area [23]	0.085	0.402
Ligamentous interfacet distance [26]	− 0.026	0.799
Minimum sagittal antero-posterior diameter of the spinal canal	0.030	0.767
Minimum cross-sectional area of the spinal canal [27,28,29]	− 0.022	0.826

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