Nerve Hydrodissection for Pain Management: A Scoping Review

Nerve Hydrodissection for Pain Management: A Scoping Review

Hydrodissection is a minimally-invasive procedure that involves injecting fluid into anatomic spaces to facilitate dissection and adhesiolysis during surgery as proposed by Graesser et al. in 2022. In the past decade, it has been applied to the management of nerve entrapments by injecting fluid around the nerve to create space and separate them from surrounding structures. Injectates used are either saline, corticosteroids, anesthetic, dextrose water, platelet-rich plasma, or combinations of these injectates. This study undertakes a scoping review of the available evidence on nerve hydrodissection to determine the extent of research done and report on information particular to this procedure. PubMed, EBSCOhost, Google Scholar, and ScienceDirect were searched, and a total of 70 articles were included in this study. Due to the lack of standardization of the factors such as injectate choice and volume, firm recommendations for the effectiveness of nerve hydrodissection are difficult to develop. Further research, especially those that aim to standardize aspects of nerve hydrodissection, is needed.