Minimally Invasive Oxygen-Ozone Therapy for Lumbar Disk Herniation — Ozone Therapies Group

Cosma F. Andreula, Luigi Simonetti, Fabio de Santis, Raffaele Agati, Renata Ricci, and Marco Leonardi BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Oxygen-ozone therapy is a minimally invasive treatment for lumbar disk herniation that exploits the biochemical properties of a gas mixture of oxygen and ozone. We assessed the therapeutic outcome of oxygen-ozone therapy and compared the outcome of administering medical ozone alone with the outcome of medical ozone followed by injection of a corticosteroid and an anesthetic at the same session. METHODS: Six hundred patients were treated with a single session of oxygen-ozone therapy. All presented with clinical signs of lumbar disk nerve root compression, with CT and/or MR evidence of contained disk herniation. Three hundred patients (group A) received an intradiscal (4 mL) and periganglionic (8 mL) injection of an oxygen-ozone mixture at an ozone concentration of 27 g/mL. The other 300 patients (group B) received, in addition, a periganglionic injection of corti...