Effectiveness and Safety
- Ozone therapy is highly effective in relieving both acute and chronic back pain.
- It is safe, convenient, and inexpensive.
- Ozone has a short half-life of approximately 1 hour at room temperature.
Applications in Pain Relief
- Used in relieving pain in degenerative disc disease.
- Superior option compared to steroid use.
- Can be administered as a first-line treatment.
- Both intradiscal and intramuscular injection of oxygen-ozone are successful approaches.
Mechanism of Action
- Reactivates the innate antioxidant system.
- In disc herniation, ozone is injected into the disc space where it dissolves in interstitial water and forms H2O2 and hydroxyl radicals.
- These radicals react with proteoglycans, leading to their breakdown, resulting in matrix degeneration with progressive shrinkage and disappearance of the herniated material.
- The amount injected is 3–10 mL with an ozone concentration of about 30 μg/mL.
- Shows a positive response in 70–80% of cases of patients with low spinal pain.