Permanent spinal cord implant for chronic pain
As a former sufferer from fairly severe chronic pain, news such as this interests me:
Joe Grewal, the first human to be fitted with a permanent implant, said he has suffered chronic back pain for more than 30 years and now “feels amazing”.
The 60-year-old said his pain level had dropped from eight of ten before the treatment to “two or three” immediately afterwards. The device, developed by Saluda, was fitted at the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney on Tuesday.
“It’s a significant decrease in pain,” he told Fairfax Media. “I’m so excited about it.”
My injury and chronic pain story can be found here, here, here, and here. By the way, somewhere along the line, I tried a non-implanted TENS unit (a more old-fashioned device somewhat similar to spinal cord stimulators) for a little while, but it didn’t seem to do much at all. That doesn’t mean they don’t help a lot of people, particularly the implanted units.
This new one is different from the other type of implanted spinal cord stimulator that has been in use for many decades:
“Spinal cord stimulators [send] signals into the spinal cord and so the person with pain feels tingling in the pain area and that confuses the brain and they don’t feel the pain, they just feel a pleasant tingling sensation,” Dr Brooker told ABC News.
“[The new] machine can adjust itself to produce whatever set level the patient wants, and that’s a big advance because previously, whenever people moved or their heart was pulsating, various things would make the electrical signal waver up and down quite significantly and they would get shock sensations and not be able to live their lives effectively in many cases.”
Doctors believe the implants could have wider uses beyond chronic pain treatment and potentially help patients with Parkinson’s disease.
Joe Grewal’s happiness at having his pain reduced from an 8 to a 2 or 3 is something that it may be hard to appreciate if you haven’t had significant chronic pain. For many, it’s unrealistic to expect their pain to go away completely, but a reduction of that magnitude is huge. It allows a person to go from being consumed by pain to having it be a relatively mild annoyance. Fortunately (knock wood), my surgery had that effect, and I’m extremely and deeply grateful.
[NOTE: This sounds pretty interesting, too.]
Responding to your story on the Ulnar never decompression, my wife had one of those and it fixed the chronic pain in her arm. The surgeon recommended this right away, but wouldn’t perform the surgery without a “nerve conduction study”. It seems those are always “inconclusive”, but the surgeons have to order them to cover their hindquarters with the insurance companies and the government. I’m glad the procedure worked for you.
never=nerve Doh!
I will have to ask my daughter about this. She is a Director of rehab therapies at a major center, and specialized in spinal cord injury when she was a hands on Physical Therapist. Her center collaborates with a large University on research projects.
This does not address mobility issues, of course; but, it sounds as though it could be a great development for many people.
Wow, how wonderful for chronic pain sufferers
something badly needed
It is troubling that they are not locating the original cause of the pain, the body’s damage control system.
This intercepts or makes the signal fuzzy for the brain when perceiving pain, but if there is a physical issue, it is not being resolved, just covered up.
Ymarsakar:
The vast majority of chronic pain involves causes that either cannot be ascertained, cannot be fixed, or were already “fixed” but the pain persists.
That’s why attacking the cause often doesn’t work for chronic pain, and attacking the symptom is the way to go.
Neo & Yamar perhaps you know neo that *chronic pain* damages nerves & establishes a *pathway* along the nerves that continually irritates, so the nerve pathway becomes an established *road* (if you will) ready to be accessed sometimes on the slightest *whim* of the body. I have spells of throbbing pain occasionally that follow the pathway of spinal anesthesia I had over 35 years ago when I had my first child !
another factor in creating chronic pain is
inadequate initial pain treatment. Not properly providing analgesia with the cause of the pain in the beginning can set up this *pain road* that the poor patient never gets relief from.
That’s why attacking the cause often doesn’t work for chronic pain, and attacking the symptom is the way to go.
But in your case, Neo, wasn’t the neurological issue due to a pressured nerve cluster?
That would be a physical cause, and yet it is a physical cause that many doctors didn’t believe in or couldn’t locate.
The pain signals are usually dead on, it is the body saying there’s something that is damaged. A case where it is phantom pain or merely neurological, should be very rare. If it is merely neurological, there would be otherwise to adjust that too.
Ymarsakar:
Yes, it was due to pressure on a nerve. But many many doctors said that surgery wouldn’t help me, and refused to operate, because the tests hadn’t come out exactly the way they wanted them to, and there was quite a bit of ambiguity.
Even the doctor who did operate wasn’t sure, although he was willing to try. He was a very experienced doctor in this surgery, and he was basically going with a diagnostic hunch. When he actually opened up my arm, he found clear evidence of the nerve pressure, but he hadn’t known for sure when he went in there.
Also, my back injury has never been operated on, because there is complete disagreement on what surgery to do and whether it would actually help, although they can see some damage on MRIs and the like. Even if people see something that looks like pressure on a nerve, it doesn’t mean it’s clear what to do about it.
Neo, I have observed and participated in a number of stimulator implants (as the anesthesiologist). It always seems to me to be a precarious one way street. This new device will have no track record, and who knows what Joe will be feeling in a few years.
establishes a *pathway* along the nerves that continually irritates, so the nerve pathway becomes an established *road* (if you will) ready to be accessed sometimes on the slightest *whim* of the body.
Perhaps. In those cases there are non invasive treatments.
There was some talk about using a mirror to reprogram the brain (plasticity such as from stroke victims rewiring speech centers) to modify the controls on a people’s body, in cases of phantom limb feelings.
I don’t believe in panaceas, whether from the West or other civilizations. I practice preventive medicine myself. Repairing the body directly after the body has torn itself apart, is more Carson and the field of surgeons.
Trying to use indirect machines to find where the damage is, after the damage has been done and the cause is unknown or the secondary/tertiary causes are even unknown, becomes difficult. Things in the human body tend to cascade fall in sequence once some issue isn’t resolved, which is what pain is for. It is the first indication that something is wrong and it will only get worst if the issue isn’t resolved.
There was that case where a woman had swallowed a pen and kept telling the doctors about it due to pain. They xrayed and did various scans, didn’t find anything. Then later on, something else happened and they found the pen.
@Yamarsakar, I ve recently been diagnosed with hypothyroidism, Ive had confirming blood work 3 times !! So I asked my MD why am I not taking medication for this ? ( I am big into herbal supplements & take turmeric 2 to 3 times daily ) So my MD tells me that some of my pertinent blood work is in a very healthy range & levels that I have indicate no treatment for hypothyroidism at this time ! I m sure it s the anti inflammatory action of the Turmeric, after I got a blood level in my system hypothyroid symptoms I was having ( eg body temperature swings mostly but annoying as Hell) have vanished . I m not bothered by feeling cold or the opposite over warming I used to get.
SO I am a believer in herbals but you have to research them thoroughly.
Certainly, because learning how to heal yourself is its own PhD program, but the result of a high score is health, the result of a low score is death or disease.
The scores don’t give you a diploma.
To most people, whether medicine is a science or an art, it doesn’t matter to them. They just want to pay someone else for the answer, which can work at times, but I think there are problems in Trusting Authority to that extent.
Oh btw, for people that want an entry level product that I’ve tested, check out why Frankincense was considered a valuable thing back in the ancient times.
Storage times, purity levels, are all pretty high for the Doterra brand.
http://doterrablog.com/essential-oil-spotlight-frankincense/
Doterra’s Onguard mix is really good against bacterial infections and various other muscle issues. I use peppermint and lemon as a replacement for bandages, cool compresses, and various ditjow Chinese herbal medicines for martial art related damages.
There are cheaper versions of Frankincense than the Doterra brand, but I cannot attest to their quality or effect.
You can order from the website or use Amazon via Neo’s portal search bars.
Normally fevers are something I can feel coming on 12 hours before it hits, and takes me 2-3 days to recover while sleeping through most of it. I boosted my immune system by digesting 6 drops of various distilled oils and next day I was mostly recovered. I didn’t know which one the body needed, so I just took half of the selection.
I believe in the experiment method, which I apply to martial arts, H2H, and various other things which I “test”. Self experimentation is one of the more critical components of a higher education or wisdom.
Eucalyptus, Wintergreen, and orange bark are also pretty stimulating on the skin or senses.
I’ve picked up some preliminary massage techniques, since a lot of Chinese martial arts are based on the Destruction/Creation principle. The more you know about human anatomy, the more easily it can be destroyed. The more you know about human anatomy’s weaknesses, it also gets easier to stop problems before it blows up.
ymaa dot com has been a pretty good source for that.
Of course I also benefit from access to the latest modern techniques and principles taught in the Western sphere, such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOo-LCI1z7s
Most of those movements I use when I practice Tai Chi or my swordmanship. I don’t use an actual Indian club, but the sword when swung at variable speed, causes centrifugal force to create “weight” on the end of the steel. Practically, it helps reconnect torn joint tissues that would normally take too long to heal or perhaps never heal. It stimulates the joint connections when you swing things like that. It also produces practical upper body strength+flexibility, rather than gym show muscles, which some people may find useful.
Very useful if your shoulder got dislocated in a fight, for example, and the hospitals are charging a lot for after care medication.
@yamar your assessment for managing your own
medical situation is *spot on*. When I tell my MD about something I ve discovered on the internet she gives me that poo poo attitude, saying it must be bunk from USA TODAY or some such Krap for general consumption. Don t they think we access medical journals & National Health sites (Pub Med) sometimes I think she is in early stages of Alzheimer’s, LOL.
Eastern medicine is an untapped resource. They can lower peoples BP by frequent walking on cobblestones ! It stimulates acupuncture pressure points in the feet that effect BP !
The larger and richer an organization grows, such as America’s healthcare sectors and sub contractors, such as insurance or lawyers or malpractice suits, the more they have to lose by doing hard core research and development that is against the social status quo.
Pharmaceutical firms are paid enormous sums to soak up the costs of failed R and D. They literally cannot afford to release drugs that they can’t patent. Most of the rest of the world is subsidized by America’s R and D networks and sunk costs.
The point is, new ways of thinking is not something you will find in large organizations of any type, especially ones with extremely large amounts of money invested in their current contracts and methodologies. This I would call an “unintentional effect” rather than an intentional one that many people like to believe in.
That’s because all large and rich organizations get like that, there are no exceptions. Religions are not an exception. Gov is not an exception. Family dynasties aren’t an exception. Nothing is an exception.
It may take some time, but the degradation is obvious to those with eyes.
That’s why breakthroughs in medicine and science weren’t created through being funded by the state or feudal lords. The breakthroughs came in the form of individuals that few people believed in. It was individuals who had no barrier to entry, little to no setup costs, that could afford, spiritually and time wise, to expend resources on developing unpopular methods.
Later on, when it becomes profitable and popular, the status quo powers claim it as their secret and acclaim it as a “scientific miracle” that the powers that be were behind setting up. But the latter only came in quite late in the process. Check on the history of the Wright Brothers, what people consider the pioneers of human flight. Witness their early times in America and what they got from the public.
Ironically, while it takes money to make money, once a person passes the 1-100 million price point, the limitations of having too much money becomes apparent. There’s too many indians and hands in the pot, all wanting a piece, all demanding that they get their investment back 10x fold, and all arguing about where to put this pot of money towards for 15x fold returns. It’s like someone wins the lottery or a family member inherits the estate of a rich dynasty member but nobody else got anything. It causes strife and people want the Money. People come up with the most ridiculous schemes to get a piece of the Money, that they lose sight of the actual point of Research and Development, of breaking through the social status quo.