If you haven’t found relief from your back pain after trying other treatments, it’s time to explore your options.
Specifically, you might benefit from a trial period with spinal cord stimulation (SCS). This treatment is exactly what it sounds like. It uses a stimulator to affect your spinal cord. That tiny device sends electrical impulses that work to interrupt your pain signals.
If you’ve been dealing with back pain and can’t seem to find relief, book an appointment with Ike Malik, MD, and our team at Texas Pain & Orthopedics. During a consultation at our Pflugerville, Texas, office, Dr. Malik can help you decide whether SCS is right for you.
If it is, here’s a quick overview of what to expect.
Spinal cord stimulation is a two-phase process. First, Dr. Malik makes sure it will work for you. If it does, he proceeds to the second phase, implanting the stimulator.
Phase one, the trial phase, starts with an extremely minor surgery. During it, Dr. Malik strategically places tiny wires leading to your spinal cord. Those wires attach to a stimulator that you wear outside your body, usually on a belt. You go home with a remote control.
Then, when you feel back pain, you can use the remote to stimulate your spinal cord. During this trial phase, you’re looking to see if your pain improves. We call a trial successful if it reduces your pain by 50% or more.
SCS trials usually last a week or two. After that, we evaluate your results. Then, you work with Dr. Malik to decide if you want to move forward with a permanent spinal cord stimulator.
If you do, that requires a minimally invasive surgery. The new stimulator, which is about the size of a silver dollar, is placed just under your skin. You still get a remote outside your body to control it.
To be totally transparent, spinal cord stimulation doesn’t work for everyone. But it does have fairly high odds of being successful.
A recent study showed that more than 86% of patients had successful trials. Of the 77% that decided to go ahead with permanent implantation, more than 76% maintained significant improvement when researchers checked in with them later. Those follow-ups ranged from 3 to 34 months later, showing that spinal cord stimulation can help to alleviate back pain for years.
In fact, another study found that after six months, SCS beat out conventional medical management (CMM) for back pain improvement. That means that if other treatments like medication or physical therapy haven’t worked for you, spinal cord stimulation might.
If you want to learn more about SCS or see if Dr. Malik recommends it for you, call our office or book your appointment online today.
