According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention prescription drug deaths have raised over the last decade and now outnumber heroin and cocaine deaths combined. This has neurosurgeons looking for alternative treatments to prescribing painkillers for chronic back pain. If a tiny electrical implant could mimic traditional painkillers in quelling the body’s response to pain, would this cut back on, or completely cut out the need for prescription painkiller in the future?
A tiny electrical device implanted inside the patient’s lower back region has become the promise of a broader range of mobility for patients, and an alternative solution to prescription painkillers. This treatment acts very much like the traditional painkillers, in that it blocks the brain’s neurons from accepting pain signals from the spinal nerves.
A recent news article in the Houston Chronicle reports on a promising result from electrical devices implanted into a patient’s back. The Houston neurosurgery doctors for Judy Franklin may be closer to solving the chronic pain and prescription painkiller controversy. A patient of this new tool for Houston neurosurgery indicated that it seems to be working well for her.
70 year old Judy Franklin said, “There was a point in the last few months that I had to literally crawl to the bathroom.” She indicated that she was bedridden and could barely move at all. This was before her
neurosurgery Houston Dr., Simpson, implanted an automatic adjusting stimulator into the spinal cord in Judy Franklin’s lower back. Adjusting to her movements, it enables her to return to a more mobile lifestyle.
In the search for alternative treatments for chronic pain, physicians agree that medicinal treatments are crucial to pain management, yet there has to be a balance between prescribing drugs for pain and researching alternatives. The united goal between physicians and watch groups like the Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) is to not restrict access to prescription painkillers for those patients who need them, but to better monitor the pain management practices of the medical industry as a whole.
Prescription drugs, which are typically prescribed for patients for short-term to chronic pain relief, are addicting. A twofold problem is that prescriptions drugs are powerful narcotics and prescription drug marketing campaigns have become more aggressive. Big pharmaceutical companies are known to give physicians and doctors kickbacks and bonuses for prescribing their brands of painkillers. It took only six years for the introduction of OxyContin as a prescription painkiller to hit the $1 billion dollar mark. Annual costs incurred for adverse prescription drug use and the subsequent treatments for the abuse have hit over $210 billion dollars annually.
The drug prescription watchdog groups and organization have begun to sit up and take notice with online programs which track drug prescriptions like painkillers. One such program is the Texas Department of Public Safety. Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) spokeswoman Katherine Cesinger states that “The Prescriptions Access Texas is designed to help health care and law enforcement officials indentify potential prescription drug abusers and dealers.”
Houston neurosurgeon Dr. Simpson indicates that there will not be any problem with patients and implanted medication dispensed by implanted pumps, even when developing tolerance levels. The most recent electrical implant for chronic back pain may be the answer for those patients who have intolerance to prescription painkillers or problems with a history of painkiller abuse. Dr. Simpson said, “You don’t want them to become addicted and then drug-seeking…”
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