When a patient is in chronic pain and is working through options for pain relief, at a certain point the options appear to run out. This includes chronic narcotics having been tried, physical therapy, interventional pain management, and other alternative treatments such as chiropractic, spinal decompression therapy, massage, and acupuncture.
A spinal cord stimulator can be an extremely effective option for people in this situation. A new study in Neurosurgery looked at a new way of using spinal cord stimulator implants. A typical implant consists of one or two columns of leads. These leads are implanted in the area around the spinal cord and give off electrical impulses to the area around the cord which then change the way that a person perceives pain signals.
The pain is perceived as a tingling and numbness as opposed to outright pain. So it does not fix the problem, but in these cases the problem cannot be fixed. So why not mask the pain? At least that is the objective and it works well over 50% of the time in studies looking at these types of implants.
The way that the investigators did it in the study was to utilize implants with a third lead on it, called a tripolar lead. This implant is designed to give better coverage and pain relief to both a person's legs as well as their back itself. The coverage for back pain has been the biggest "knock" against spinal cord stimulators, while the coverage for leg pain has been its biggest benefit to date.
There were 11 participants in the study. They filled out pain scale scores, along with functional scores. The results were great. Over 80% achieved excellent relief of back and leg pain. Along with this the average reduction in the pain scale score was six points down from 8.2 to 2.2 on a scale from 0 to 10.
The overall effectiveness of spinal cord stimulators has been around 60%. By adding a third lead, the researchers were able to improve the effectiveness by a considerable percentage, not only for leg pain. But also for back pain making this a potentially better option for those suffering solely from a lot of back pain.
When a patient has no substantial options for chronic back pain, it can be depressing and defeating. When surgery is not an option, and nothing is improving the situation, it is great to have a last resort. And now that last resort is getting better with new research.
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