Every day is a battle to find relief from your chronic pain, often forcing you to resort to potentially risky medications or invasive surgery. If you want a minimally invasive solution that eliminates your reliance on painkillers, neurostimulation may be just what you’re looking for.
The team here at Bux Pain Management, led by Dr. Anjum Bux, specializes in painful and debilitating spine issues, and our primary goal is to help our patients find much-needed, and long-term, relief.
As part of our suite of treatment options, we offer neurostimulation, which is a drug-free and minimally invasive path to relief from your chronic pain.
Behind neurostimulation
At its core, neurostimulation is a technique in which we implant a device that delivers electrical impulses that disrupt the pain messaging between your peripheral nervous system and your brain.
This approach to pain management isn’t new — it’s been in use for more than 50 years. What has changed is that over the course of the last half century, we’ve gained a better understanding of which areas to target for superior relief, including your spinal cord, your dorsal root ganglion, and your peripheral nerves.
We’ve also gained a wealth of knowledge in delivering the right amplitude, pulse width, and frequency of electricity for each unique situation, which allows us better customization of your pain management.
The advantages of neurostimulation
There are many advantages to neurostimulation, not the least of which is reducing your reliance on potentially dangerous drugs like opioids. The risks with these medications have been well documented over the last decade as patients find themselves unexpectedly addicted to these painkillers.
Beyond breaking free of medications, neurostimulation has many other benefits, including:
- The ability to adjust your pain relief
- The implant can be removed at any time
- It’s a targeted, as opposed to systemic, approach
- Implantation is a minimally invasive, outpatient procedure
- The implant lasts for years
Most important, neurostimulation is highly effective. One report from The Journal of Neurosurgery reviewed 68 studies and found that neurostimulation has a, “positive, symptomatic, long-term effect in cases of refractory angina pain, severe ischemic limb pain secondary to peripheral vascular disease, peripheral neuropathic pain, and chronic low-back pain.” The report went on to conclude that neurostimulation is both safe and effective for chronic neuropathic conditions.
Are you a candidate for neurostimulation?
The answer to this is tough as it depends upon the underlying cause and location of your chronic pain. At our practice, we’ve had great success with neuromodulation in treating the following:
- Chronic back pain
- Chronic neck pain
- Spinal cord injuries
- Pain after surgery
- Failed back surgery syndrome
- Complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS)
To determine whether you’re a good candidate for neurostimulation, the first step is to schedule a consultation at one of our three locations in Lexington, Cynthiana, and Danville, Kentucky.