Chapters Transcript Video Zapping Back Pain: Spinal Cord Stimulation Changes Patient’s Life My name is Alex Alexander. I am 50 years old. I'm married. I have a beautiful 23 year old boy and two precious puppies that I love. In 2023, uh, in June, I was just doing random stuff here at home, cleaning, and I bent over. To pick up something from the ground and felt a pop and I could not move. My son managed to get me to the couch. And shortly after that I had him take me to the emergency room and then they just sent me home with some pain meds and that was it. So Alexa was unfortunately suffering from a condition called lumbar radiculopathy. Most times people know of it as a slipped disc. She was suffering from pain in her lower back that radiated to the front of her thigh and the left side. She underwent a series of noninvasive treatments first, including extensive physical therapy, non-opioid and opioid, uh, analgesic medications, a series of spinal injections, and unfortunately her symptoms continued despite the disk healing and regressing so she required a neurosurgical intervention with Doctor. At that point we elected to proceed with an elective minimally invasive surgery to try and decompress that nerve and improve her radiculopathy. This is something called a microdiscectomy. It gave me a lot of relief. The only thing that I was left with unfortunately was my left leg, my thigh. Um, stayed with numbness, tingling, and burning sensations. Now we had confirmed that she had had an appropriate decompression with MRI and ultimately she was still continuing with pretty severe and disabling pain. At that point you can consider neuromodulation or a spinal cord stimulator through electrical stimulation of the spinal cord in order to try to block the brain's perception of that pain. What I really like about spinal cord stimulation is that you get to test drive the device before you get to have it implanted in your body, and that's where my role comes in in the system again early on in the trial she already. She wanted the device implanted, so the uh final uh spinal cord stimulator implant placement is a minor surgical procedure uh that does come with general anesthesia typically takes about 1 hour to 1 hour and a half. It involves two small incisions, one in the midline of the lower back, uh, and one off to the side, typically in the flank. And essentially what you're doing is. Removing a small amount of bone, uh, usually over the lower thoracic spine where you can place the implant and then tunnel the wires that come out of it typically into the patient's, uh, left or right flank where you implant the small battery generator, which is probably about 1 to 2 inches, uh, in width underneath the skin. I had to stop working in my garden. I had to stop mowing my lawn, um, and now I am back to doing all of those things comfortably. And I don't feel my discomforts and I don't have any pains. So I am continuing to see Ms. Alexander as needed. Uh, she's done very well from the stimulator placement. Her incisions have healed beautifully and she is back to normal activities without restriction from my perspective. She's seen improvement in her left leg pain and I'm very happy with her progress. I feel my improvements are amazing and I'm heading in a healthy direction, and I look forward to what the future holds. Created by
