A systematic review and network meta‐analysis comparing different epidural steroid injection approaches

Background Low back pain (LBP) and lumbosacral radiculopathy are frequent disorders that cause nerve root injury, resulting in a variety of symptoms ranging from loss of sensation to loss of motor function depending on the degree of nerve compression. Objectives The goal of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of various epidural injection procedures in adult LBP patients. Study Design Systematic review and network meta‐analysis. Setting Egypt. Methods PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Cochrane Database, and Embase were used to conduct an electronic literature search. We included RCTs, cohorts, case controls, patients 30 years old with a clinical presentation of low back pain, and comprehensive data on the effects of the intervention on patients with lumbosacral radicular pain who got epidural steroid injections via various techniques. Only papers written in English were eligible. Results Our analysis showed that parasagittal intralaminar (PIL) was the most effective approach in decreasing VAS (0–10) in the short term (