![]() ![]() Most patients report improvement in chronic back pain with a regimen of three or four treatments per day, lasting one or two hours each time.īecause the implant and external control device is portable, many patients report that they can undergo treatments at work, while sitting at a desk, or in the comfort of their own home. The patient’s doctor can also help determine how often treatments should take place, and how long each treatment session should last. This can continue to be controlled and adjust after the implant has been placed. Next, the doctor attaches safe, coated wires called “leads” running from the stimulator to the nerve endings or spinal canal, depending on where the patient’s pain is located.Īnother advantage of spinal cord stimulation is that the patient – in consultation with his or her spinal cord physician – can select the pulse beat strength and rate that is best for them and can adjust that selection as needed. The implantation of the permanent stimulator takes place in an outpatient setting with local anesthesia and sedation. If the patient responds well to the temporary spinal cord stimulation, the patient’s spinal doctor can insert a more permanent electrode stimulator deeper within their body. One of the major advantages of spinal cord stimulation is that the process lends itself to a simple trial run of the procedure to determine whether a larger-scale spinal cord stimulation should be the next step.įor a trial run, an electrode can be temporarily inserted through a tiny incision in a patient’s skin and connected to a control stimulator device outside of the patient’s body, which the patient can operate. ![]() During a spinal cord stimulation treatment, an electronic pulse generator sends pulses to the nerve sites in a way that interferes with and blocks pain signal so that the patient’s pain is reduced or eliminated. Spinal cord stimulation is a minimally invasive method of chronic back pain treatment involving electrical stimulation of the spinal nerves. While spinal cord stimulation may not be the right choice for every person, it has greatly improved pain symptoms for many chronic back pain patients. The partially implanted, externally powered stimulation system presently in use also suffers from problems of reliability and convenience to the patient.If you are a patient living with chronic back pain, spinal cord stimulation is worth discussing with your spinal surgeon before resorting to spinal cord surgery. Spontaneous electrode displacements, leading to loss of analgesia and requiring minor surgery for repositioning, were encountered frequently, as were lead wire failures necessitating replacement. The side effects of stimulation, both as reported subjectively and as measured objectively by sensory testing, were not clinically significant. Reported improvements in the ability to perform various everyday activities, and elimination of drug usage by many patients, corroborate this finding. As judged by three different subjective rating methods, epidural stimulation successfully relieved otherwise intractable chronic pain in from 23 to 26 of the 31 patients. 31 patients suffering from intractable pain associated with chronic low back syndrome, terminal cancer, and other disorders have been studied after an average 6 months’ treatment by electrical stimulation of the spinal cord applied via electrodes inserted through a Tuohy needle into the epidural space. ![]()
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