The standard care in patients with a painful osteoporotic vertebral compression fracture (VCF) is conservative therapy. Percutaneous vertebroplasty (PV), is a new minimally invasive technique for pain treatment in which bone cement is injected in the fractured vertebra. Recent RCTs provide conflicting results: two sham-controlled studies show no benefit of PV while an unmasked but controlled RCT found significantly better pain relief after PV at acceptable costs.