Doctors in Australia have carried out a pioneering procedure to treat chronic pain, fitting a permanent spinal cord implant which can record signals from the nervous system and adjust the strength of impulses sent to affected areas.The procedure is claimed to be a breakthrough for treatment of chronic pain and could help patients to avoid pain-killers.
Joe Grewal, the first human to be fitted with a permanent implant, said he has suffered chronic back pain for more than 30 years and now “feels amazing”. The 60-year-old said his pain level had dropped from eight of ten before the treatment to “two or three” immediately afterwards. The device, developed by Saluda Medical, was fitted at the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney on Tuesday.The implant was inserted within the spinal canal, about five millimetres from the spinal cord. From there, the implant sends an electrical current through the nerves to provide relief in the area of the body that is experiencing pain.
Dr Charles Brooker, the specialist who fitted the implant, said it was a “big advance” because the device could record signals emerging from the nervous system. “Spinal cord stimulators [send] signals into the spinal cord and so the person with pain feels tingling in the pain area and that confuses the brain and they don’t feel the pain, they just feel a pleasant tingling sensation,” Dr Brooker told ABC News.
The Evoke closed loop neuromodulation control system is designed to automatically adjust stimulation levels for maximum symptom relief irrespective of patient movement. A major drawback of conventional spinal cord stimulation products is that the electrodes placed along the spine move relative to the location of the nerves of the spinal cord. As they move, the level of stimulation of the nerves changes. Simple activities like coughing, sitting down or moving the head can cause changes in the nerve signals of up to 10 times, often causing unpleasant sensations, ranging from uncomfortable tingling to severe shocks. The new machine can adjust itself to produce whatever set level the patient wants, and that’s a big advance because previously, whenever people moved or their heart was pulsating, various things would make the electrical signal waver up and down quite significantly.
Saluda chief executive John Parker said his implant, which will initially cost about $30,000, had the capacity to reach a market 10 times the size of the current one and had the potential to help patients with other nerve conditions, including Parkinson’s disease and overactive bladder syndrome. Parker was formerly an executive director at Cochlear, a global biotechnology company based in Australia that designs, manufactures and supplies the Nucleus cochlear implant, the Hybrid electro-acoustic implant and the Baha bone conduction implant that has restored the sense of hearing. Cochlear was named Australia’s most innovative company in 2002 and 2003, and one of the world’s most innovative companies by Forbes in 2011.