Over the past several decades representing people who have been seriously injured in motor vehicle accidents, falls, explosions, or due to defective products or medical errors, many of our clients developed a chronic pain syndrome for which a spinal cord stimulator (SCS) was indicated. Indeed, spinal cord stimulation is a widely used therapy to treat chronic pain with rapidly increasing indications.
Chronic Pain Caused by Nerve Damage
In nearly all of our cases involving serious personal injury, medical negligence, and wrongful death, or clients suffer painful injuries – whether due to trauma from a vehicle crash, medical error, or otherwise. Clearly, not all painful injuries necessitate – or will even benefit from – spinal cord stimulation.
SCS is addressed at treating nerve pain – also known as neuropathic pain or neuralgia. Nerve pain is commonly caused by traumatic injury to the nerves that run to a person’s muscles and organs, as sell as brain or spine (neck, thoracic, and low back) injury. There are also a host of other medical (non-traumatic) causes of nerve pain.
Neuropathic pain can be debilitating, severe, and chronic. The pain may feel sharp – like an electric shock – or like a shooting, stabbing, or burning sensation. The pain may be sensitive to touch or temperature, and may be worse at night. Chronic neuropathic pain can impact all aspects of one’s life, such as sleep, work, exercise, personality, and relationships with family.
What is Spinal Cord Stimulation
A spinal cord stimulator is a medical device that is implanted into one’s body to treat chronic (long-term and ongoing), severe pain. More specifically, SCS is an often-considered treatment modality for “refractory pain” – chronic pain in which a patient has failed to respond to more conservative therapies, such as pain management medication and physical therapy.
SCS uses a mild electrical current to stimulate nerve fibers in the spinal cord, which prevents pain signals from reaching the brain. When the brain does not receive pain signals, the person will not experience pain – or, at the very least, will experience pain relief.
In other words, SCS does not fix or treat the source of the pain (i.e., the damaged nerves), but instead reduces how the brain perceives the pain.
The hardware involved in a spinal cord stimulator includes a small implantable pulse generator and leads – wires allowing the electrical current pulses to be sent to the patients’ spinal cord-specific nerves, and covering pain signals sent to the brain. The device also includes a remote control to adjust the level of pain stimulation sent by the pulse generator.
Conditions Treated by Spinal Cord Stimulation
Studies show that SCS use to treat chronic pain has increased exponentially over the last decade. SCS has been proven to be a safe and effective treatment modality and is FDA-approved for patients with chronic neuropathic pain conditions, such as:
- Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) — commonly affecting the arms and legs following a traumatic injury
- Persistent Spinal Pain Syndrome (PSPS) or Failed back surgery symptom (FBSS) – back or neck pain that was not relieved by spine surgery
- Peripheral neuropathy — debilitating pains in the hands and feet, and can impact other parts of the body
- Critical limb ischemia (CLI) – vessel obstruction causing reduced blood flow to the extremities, resulting in severe pain
Over 50,000 spinal cord stimulators are implanted each year for chronic pain. Recent studies have found that patients generally benefit from SCS vs. traditional treatments for chronic neuropathic pain. Furthermore, SCS patients generally take far less pain medication, including opiods.
Nevertheless, there are still clear limitations and challenges to spinal cord stimulation. The procedure and technology is still generally expensive. Also, given that SCS is by nature an electric device, it is vulnerable to connection and energy issues.
Our clients’ general experiences have been consistent with the current literature, which shows that in the appropriate setting of debilitating, chronic neuropathic pain, spinal cord stimulation can provide signigicant benefit to patients.
For a Free Consultation with one of our top-rated trial attorneys at Passen & Powell, and to discuss a potential new matter, call us at 312-527-4500 or email info@passenpowell.com.