Many of use who treat spinal stenosis and lumbar radiculopathy would disagree with this. A big problem with many of the studies and the meta-analysis is that they are asking the wrong question. I send patients with lumbar spinal stenosis and DDD or OA of the back who have lumbar radicular pain who have failed all other therapies (PT, NSAIDs, neuropathic analgesics), and as previous studies suggest, a significant number do obtain significant improvement in pain while they failed everything else. Many of these studies are looking at long term pain relief, which is not how I present it to my patients (I present it as a therapy which may offer short term pain improvement that can be repeated in the future if it works .... as an alternative to surgery).