It has been in use for three years under various research protocols. It is an outpatient procedure. A needle is put in the disk, and then a catheter is threaded around the disk under fluoroscopy with the patient awake. If the catheter gets too close to a nerve, we want to know about that. Once the catheter is in place, it is then heated to 90 degrees centigrade, which is about 10 degrees short of boiling.
Heat dissipates through the disk.
Three things can occur. A crack can be sealed shut. The next is destruction because of the heat of fine nerve fibers that penetrate the outer one-third of the disk. It is a treatment only for back pain and only for patients failing to respond to all other conservative measures. Traction can, in fact, reduce pain and the displacement of the disk protrusion.