An Example of Spinal Cord Stimulation - Health Channel

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An Example of Spinal Cord Stimulation |

Arthur Whitelaw is a patient of Dr. Jose Mena, Interventional Spine Specialist with Miami Orthopedics & Sports Medicine Institute. Whitelaw had so much pain for many years, and after the spinal cord stimulation, he feels very good.
“The procedure with him went well, we did a trial portion, and after the trial he responded exceptionally well. He was that perfect fit for getting the device implanted,” the doctor says.

Transcript

You had so much pain for so many years and you told us that pain was your best friend, when I woke up every morning what’s your quality of life like right now? Wonderful, wonderful. In fact I just had open-heart surgery a year ago in July I had a quadruple bypass and two valves replaced and I recovered so quickly from when I was able to go to Europe a month after I get out of the hospital. I’m 78, we live in your life now 78 years old still work – God Bless you so he’s given me that ability with this back because the back was so terrible and they just pulled everything down that I had to do. Then let’s go into that then because when when Arthur came to you you saw he was a candidate here and he was having such incredible pain. What did you find, what did you see and then give us an idea about that procedure itself, how that went? The procedure with him went well. We did a trial portion which is the test holes or the test drive, and when everything went on and went uneventfull. I remember that he was very functional bike back then that those are the things that we’re looking prior normally when we are talking to the patient we want to know what they were they are and where they want to go and he meant all the check marks that we’re looking in order to consider the the stimulator and after the trial he responded exceptionally well, so he was that perfect fit for getting the device implanted. What about the surgery though give us an idea we saw a little bit earlier but from your perspective. What you were saying before what you were seeing before was the the trial portion normally the surgery is nothing more than the trial except that we insert the battery in the in the body. So essentially what we do is that we place the leads in the spine one or two leads once we have those in place we do a small incision in the in the back where we insert a battery and we tunnel those leads underneath the skin to connect it to the battery, in and out from the procedure from the surgical procedure takes about 45 minutes to an hour or from from surgery it’s nothing it’s a quick procedure and patients they wake up amazing once we start these we turn the stimulation on.

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