Table 4.

Summary of studies for evaluating the efficacy of radiofrequency nucleoplasty.

Study	Study Design	Participants	Interventions	Outcome Measurement	Summary of Outcomes
Adakli et al., 2015 [122]	Retrospective	n = 73 (36 in group I and 37 in group II)	Group I with lumbar radiofrequency thermocoagulation nucleoplasty. Group II with targeted disc decompression.	VAS and FRI at 1, 6, and 12 months	A significant improvement was observed in all pain relief and improvement of function when compared with the preprocedure values, in both methods. The degree of pain relief after 1, 6 and 12 months was significantly lower in the decompression compared to nucleoplasty, but there was no statistically significant difference in function improvement. These results indicate that radiofrequency thermocoagulation nucleoplasty and targeted disc decompression could be effective and safe alternatives to surgery for the treatment of hernia nucleus pulposus.
Nie et al., 2018 [126]	Retrospective	n = 260 (113 in group I and 147 in group II)	Group I with nucleoplasty. Group II with targeted disc decompression.	VAS and FRI at 1, 3, 6, 12, 24, and 60 months	The findings from a 5-year follow-up study revealed that both targeted disc decompression and nucleoplasty effectively reduced pain caused by disc herniation and improved the patients’ quality of life. Furthermore, there was no statistically significant difference in therapeutic efficacy between these two treatment methods.

VAS, visual analog scale; FRI, functional rating index.