Some days are better than others, but every day is a challenge thanks to back pain that seems to follow your every movement. As you look ahead, you want a road that’s short on risks and discomfort while being long on pain relief and ease of use.
One treatment that can deliver on those goals is spinal cord stimulation, which is a minimally invasive approach to managing back pain.
At Glaser Pain Relief Center, patients come to see Dr. Jeffrey Glaser, Dr. John Zheng, and the rest of our team because we offer innovative and nonsurgical treatments that tackle chronic pain. And one option that’s helping many of our patients to move forward with less pain is spinal cord stimulation, which is proving to be a fantastic alternative to spine surgery.
Let’s first examine why finding nonsurgical solutions for back pain — as well as related pain in your buttocks and legs — is so important.
There are the obvious issues that come with any surgery, namely considerable downtime, discomfort, and risks for infection. Spine surgeries, however, come with some unique concerns on top of those.
For example, each year in the United States, doctors perform more than 400,000 spinal fusions. While these surgeries can be successful, they may set you up for larger problems down the road if you develop adjacent disc disease. When two vertebrae are fused together, there’s more pressure on the vertebral segments above and below the fusion, which often leads to premature degeneration and more back pain.
As well, failed back surgery syndrome — a condition in which pain still persists after your spine surgery — isn’t uncommon. Nearly 15% of people who undergo spine surgery end up with postoperative pain and other issues.
So, as a solution for back pain, spine surgery can sometimes deliver opposite results.
Now let’s move away from spine surgery and explore an alternative road to relief for many types of chronic back pain — spinal cord stimulation.
Your spinal cord is the main conduit between your central nervous system and your peripheral nervous system. The concept behind spinal cord stimulation is to interrupt the pain messaging between your nerves and your brain.
To do this, we insert electrodes in the area of your spinal cord where the nerves are actively firing off pain signals. These electrodes deliver mild electrical pulses that interfere with the pain messaging — a technique that’s called neuromodulation.
There are several advantages to spinal cord stimulation:
At the same time as you enjoy these benefits, you’re also able to avoid the potentially problematic outcomes associated with spine surgery that we outlined above.
If you’d like to learn more about spinal cord stimulation as an alternative to spine surgery, we’re happy to sit down with you to review your candidacy. To get that ball rolling, please contact Glaser Pain Relief Center in Encino, California, today to schedule your consultation.
