[The dark side of facet joint]

Low back pain (LBP) is a major medical and economical problem, because of its high incidence. Indeed, 70-85% of adult people will suffer from this kind of pain once in their life. We will focus in this article on chronic LBP, which represent an annual prevalence of 30% and more specifically on mechanical pain, with our without radiation into the legs. In case of failure of traditional analgesia combining drugs and physical therapies, we can propose interventional pain relief. This involves a series of diagnostic blocks (medial branch blocks), followed by the treatment (radiofrequency ablation). This treatment remains purely symptomatic. A multidisciplinary approach with patient's physical reconditioning is therefore very important.