What You Need to Know About Spinal Cord’s Stimulation

Finding the appropriate solution for your back and neck pain can be cumbersome. Surgery and other treatments can fail or may not be an option to treat chronic pain. Spinal cord’s stimulation can come in handy to relieve the pain and improve your day to day living. Spinal cord’s stimulation is an essential process. It gives you a light electrical stimulation to the nerves along the spinal cord and modifies the nerves’ activities to reduce the feeling of pain that reaches the brain. It cures pain that other treatment forms have failed to treat, for example, back and neck pain. Specialists of spinal cord stimulation in The Woodlands at Yancey Pain & Spine incorporate various treatments with the latest technology to provide relief for the pain that has been disturbing you for a long time.

What is the procedure for spinal cord’s stimulation?

The spinal cord’s stimulation process will be done in two stages. The first stage will involve a trial to check whether the spinal cord’s stimulation relieves your pain and helps your doctor know the type of therapy and stimulation settings that suit you. The second stage involves implanting the stimulator in your body. Your doctor will ask you to remove your clothing and jewelry then dress in a hospital gown. You will then be offered a sedative to make you relax.

The doctor will then make an incision in your lower back then insert one or more wires (leads) into the epidural space. In doing this, the doctor will be keen to determine your pain to know where to best place the wires (leads). The stimulator is then joined to the leads; you will then wear it with a belt for seven days. The doctor will then apply a dressing on the incision to close it. The stimulator works by producing pulses sent to the spinal cord through the wires to relieve the pain. If this treatment relieves your pain, the doctor will then implant a permanent wire. Before going home, your doctor will teach you how to turn the stimulator for moderate pain relief.

What is the Importance of spinal cord’s stimulation?

Spinal cord’s stimulation has the advantage that it is reversible when it does not work for you or when you choose to stop using it. It also has no permanent effects on your spine. The following are some of the other advantages of spinal cord’s stimulation:

• You can adjust it for optimal pain relief; pain varies at different times, and this device helps you control the pain.
• It is a minimally invasive procedure.
• According to research, it lowers the use of opioids; people who underwent this process reported that they had dropped some of their medications for pain relief.
• It relieves pain only where it is needed; the spinal cord stimulator offers targeted pain; thus, you will avoid taking medications that affect the whole body and cause you problems.
• It is cost-effective
• It is appropriate for those who have a problem with oral medications.
• It has no renewals; thus, you can use it for many years. This saves you from frequent visits to your doctor.

After undergoing spinal cord’s stimulation, you should keep in contact with your doctor while following instructions such as avoiding ultrasound machines and devices that have magnetic strips, avoid operating heavy machinery or driving.