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

Table 2 Analysis of patients with maximum pain relief and no response

Variable	0% pain relief (n = 18)	100% pain relief (n = 11)	p value
Infiltrated motion segments			0.711^a
Qualitative measurements
Facet joint degeneration (Weishaupt) [20]			0.837^a
Neuroforaminal stenosis (Lee) [58]			0.432^a
Spinal canal stenosis (Schizas) [30]			0.902^a
Quantitative measurements
Posterior disc height [21]	2.8 (2.1)	3.8 (0.9)	0.266^b
Neuroforaminal antero-posterior distance [22]	6.3 (1.6)	6.2 (1.5)	0.860^b
Neuroforaminal cross-sectional area [23]	58.3 (16.9)	63.9 (10.1)	0.439^b
Ligamentous interfacet distance [26]	13.5 (4.1)	13.4 (3.6)	0.973^b
Minimum sagittal antero-posterior diameter of the spinal canal	12.1 (3.5)	10.3 (2.8)	0.260^b
Minimum cross-sectional area of the spinal canal [27,28,29]	155.3 (81.3)	131.4 (41.7)	0.482^b

No difference in motion segments between those two groups was observed. Values are reported as means (standard deviation)
^aMann-Whitney U test
^b t test for independent samples

ISSN: 1749-799X