CINCINNATI (WKRC) – A breakthrough device to fight pain is now available in the Tri-State, and it’s helping many people find relief without prescription pills.
It’s almost something out of science fiction. Doctors at The Christ Hospital are among the first in the nation to begin offering patients who have targeted pain in the neck, shoulder, hip or knee a new stimulation device that sort of retrains the brain.
One of the first to get a chance to experience its miraculous pain-fighting power was Brenda Smith.
“Well, I tell you, it’s kind of winning the lottery,” Smith said.
After years of what she said felt was like a band around her knee so she couldn’t move it, she is now nearly pain-free.
It’s all due to the SPRINT PNS System.
“It’s a peripheral nerve-stimulator system, and it involves using a small needle to put a small metal lead about the size of a hair near a nerve that is involved in causing a patient to have chronic pain. And that little wire stays in place for 60 days and sends a little electrical impulse, so it provides a little bit of a tingle sensation near that nerve and helps to basically reprogram the spinal cord and the brain where there has built up a memory of chronic pain,” said anesthesiologist Dr. Duane Bellamy.
The internal MicroLead, as it’s called, is removed after 60 days, but Dr. Bellamy says the pain relief continues well beyond that time.
“It seems that what happens is when pain becomes chronic or long-lasting that the nervous system builds up a memory of that pain at the spinal cord level and even in the brain,” he said. “So what we have to do is try to retrain that area in the brain and help it to develop good memories instead of bad memories by sending these little impulses over the 60-day period.”
“I can walk without pain. Now, I’m not going to tell you it’s 100%, but it’s very, very, very tolerable,” Smith said.
In most cases, this is covered by medical insurance plans, but in some cases, you may need prior authorization.
For more information, call 513-585-2451.
