@reemylove nnThere are a series of injections involved. First of all, alongside the spine, patients typically get initial injections (and get modest pain relief from two "medial branch block", injections) that help identify which nerves are the source of pain. Those medial branch block injections may reduce the pain a little bit, but the primary purpose of those is to identify which nerves cause the back pain. This takes 2 office visits for the medial branch block injections. So, once the responsible nerves are identified, the radio frequency injections are done within one office visit. The doctor is able to go to the identified nerve endings, then heat up (cauterize) those nerve endings (heat the outer nerve sheaths), and the procedure is over. The cauterized nerve endings block the pain signals going to the brain. You may search the Mayo blog and see what else people say about the RFA. The effect lasts several months, and there is at least one report, with successive RFA treatments, the extent of time they are effective gets longer and longer.