A New Device Gives Patients in Pain Another Option

The Christian Hospital Pain Management Center strives to bring the most advanced treatments to help all patients in pain. While available modalities range from medication and injections to more complex options like spinal cord stimulation, some patients with pain in their foot and ankle, knee, shoulder or other focal areas still struggled. To help these patients, the Pain Management Center recently brought on a new treatment: peripheral nerve stimulation.

Peripheral nerve stimulators are incredibly small devices that don’t require a battery implant and have resulted in profound improvement in patients’ pain. Through a minimally invasive, outpatient procedure, a thin wire is placed just one centimeter under the skin next to a nerve that senses pain. The device is powered externally through the skin, which can be by wand or even a sock, to deliver targeted pain relief.

Another appealing aspect of the device is that patients have the ability to test it prior to permanent placement and decide if it works well for them. If it does, the procedure takes only 15 minutes with light sedation and no recovery time. Patients can resume their normal activities the next day with immediate pain relief.

Peripheral nerve stimulation has been effective in providing more than 80% improvement in pain and mobility for patients who might not have had any other options.

Jean Underberg, 67, is one of the many patients who has benefited from the addition of peripheral nerve stimulation at the Pain Management Center.

Jean struggled with neuropathy in her feet for much of her life. She sought the help of two other pain medicine practices and underwent two unsuccessful surgeries in an effort to find relief from her foot pain. She was told she had no other options — until she came across Chris Beuer, MD, a pain management specialist and medical director of the Christian Hospital Pain Management Center. Despite being two hours from her home in Cape Girardeau, Mo., Jean was hopeful.

Dr. Beuer removed the two spinal stimulators in her back and placed the peripheral nerve stimulator in her leg.  For the first time since she can remember, Jean had no neuropathy.

“They changed my life,” says Jean. “We had restricted what we’d done and the places we’d go, but now I’m able to do things that I couldn’t before. I can go on trips. I can walk comfortably.” She adds, “Dr. Beuer had the necessary skill and the care — it really mattered to him that I get better. I am just so grateful.”

Continuing to offer new, innovative treatments ensures the Pain Management Center can help all patients, like its team helped Jean. “There will be a group of patients who don’t respond to the traditional therapy options. If you’re not offering these newer types of therapies, those patients would just be stuck. So we have to make sure we’re staying on the cutting edge in a way that is safe and appropriate and supported by well-done studies,” says Dr. Beuer. “We’re fortunate to be in a specialty that continues to advance rapidly, and we have to keep up.”

To see if peripheral nerve stimulation is right for you, schedule a consultation with Dr. Beuer by calling 314.747.WELL (9355). To learn more about the innovative procedures offered by the Pain Management Center, visit ChristianHospital.org/Pain.