The increasing prevalence of low back pain and osteoarthritis pain has been described as an epidemic for the aging population. When acute pain is transformed into chronic pain, the consequences become serious for the patient as well as the family. Consequences include physical dysfunction and mental depression which is followed by the influence of decreasing living quality and increasing medical cost. For society, it is often related to welfare benefits and lost productivity. This kind of pain, as such a wide definition, can be classified by the specific etiology (lumbar disc herniation, degenerative vertebral slippage, osteoproliferation, unstable of joints, etc.).

The variety of the specific etiology makes the precise diagnosis and treatment of these two kinds of pain a challenge. Although there has been significant progress in diagnosis and treatment towards pain, it continues to remain a challenge as there is still a lot of work to be done. For example, many kinds of conventional drugs have been invented but the curative and side effects still remain to be discussed. Additionally, surgical management is an alternative method of treatment, but the traditional operations often have some disadvantages including large volume of blood loss, undetermined side effects, higher possibility of infection, and uncertain efficacy as well as potential high costs and unknown effects to quality of life. Therefore, minimally invasive procedures to manage such pains can also be a hotspot nowadays.

Our aim is to have access to the latest research based on minimally invasive treatment and pathology of low back pain and osteoarthritis pain. We welcome both original research and review articles about one specific kind of disease that may cause the related pain or articles about the novel pathology of one specific pain and the minimally invasive treatment that can be used to treat the pain we mentioned.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Novel minimally invasive procedures for low back pain and osteoarthritis pain
• Novel insights into the cellular, molecular, or psychological basis of low back pain and osteoarthritis pain
• Complications of pain treatment (prevention and management)
• Novel or improved surgery instruments for pain treatment
• Novel biomaterials used in minimally invasive treatment