One of the main services offered by Yancey Pain & Spine is spinal cord stimulation. It is mostly used to alleviate chronic pain, particularly in the neck and spine.
It is very difficult to find an effective treatment for chronic pain issues. Spinal cord stimulation does not treat the main cause of the pain, but instead, is used for pain relief when other options simply won’t do.
Spinal cord stimulation involves a minimally invasive procedure that installs a stimulator in the spine and a generator elsewhere to disrupt pain signals sent to the brain.
There are many advantages of using spinal cord stimulation including:
Reversible
You cannot say this about many surgical procedures. Spinal cord stimulation is one of the procedures that can be reversed if it does not yield the desired results in the patient. A patient can also decide to reverse the procedure when they want to search for other alternative treatments.
Reversibility, as it pertains to spinal cord stimulation, means that the surgeon can go back into the body and remove the wires, generator and lead whenever necessary. Since it is a minimally invasive procedure, there are fewer risks of performing the reversal.
Adjustable
Even though two people may be suffering from chronic back pain, the level of pain varies from individual to individual. Spinal cord stimulation is one of the few pain relief solutions that take that into account.
The patient is given a controller after the generator and stimulator have been implanted in the body. The controller controls the strength of the electrical impulses sent to the brain from the spine. The patient can then use the controller according to the pain they want to relieve.
Adjustable pain relief is one of the main selling points of spinal cord stimulation. Control over pain is a great luxury for those with chronic pain.
Less Opioid Use
With the opioid epidemic that is currently ravaging the planet, procedures or solutions that reduce the intake of such medicine are very welcome. Spinal cord stimulation is one of those solutions.
Addiction to opioids is very risky and if you suffer from chronic pain, you are at a higher risk of such addiction. Some people have had chronic pain and have taken medication for years without any long-lasting pain relief.
Spinal cord stimulation only uses drugs during the procedure. Thereafter, all you need is for the device to work with no medicine needed.
Specific Pain Relief
Most ways used to alleviate chronic pain such as stretching and medication usually affect the entire body. Because these treatments affect other areas of the body, they usually have devastating side effects that may add to the pain instead of relieving it.
On the other hand, spinal cord stimulation is designed for targeted pain relief. Only back and neck pain is addressed or any other area where chronic pain is experienced. The procedure will place the devices where the pain originates hence the pain relief experienced will be specific to that area.