RF Ablation for Painful Spinal Metastases

In this episode, neurosurgeon Dr. Nam Tran and our host Dr. Michael Barraza discuss minimally invasive procedures to treat both primary spine tumors and spine metastases.

Dr. Tran describes the flexibility that kyphoplasty and spinal ablation can grant patients who are not suitable candidates for open surgical decompression. These minimally invasive procedures can reduce hospital stays from 4-5 days to just one night.

Dr. Tran views ablation not only from a palliative pain reduction perspective, but also from an oncologic perspective that aims to reduce tumor burden. Dr. Tran says the ideal candidate for ablation is a patient who has isolated disease to the anterior column of the spine. With larger lesions, Dr. Tran relies on his neurosurgical background to take an aggressive approach in treating the entire vertebra.

The doctors also discuss research studies that have made ablation more widely accepted and available (all articles are linked below).