A specialist in the technique of managing chronic pain through spinal cord stimulation — neuromodulation — says medicine is moving away from drugs to implantable medical devices to treat chronic diseases.
The secretary of the Society of Neuromodulation for Australia and New Zealand, Dr Nick Christelis, told a pain medicine conference in Kuala Lumpur that there is a shift from the biochemical era (medications) to the bioelectrical era (using implantable medical devices) to treat chronic pain.
“We can now treat diseases that we’d never even dreamed of treating in the past like persistent nerve (neuropathic) pain, complex regional pain syndrome, chronic pain after spinal surgeries and other surgeries,” Christelis said.
He added: “Nerve stimulation can also now be used to treat bladder and bowel dysfunction, and even some movement disorders like Parkinson’s disease.”
Christelis was addressing a Pain at the Interface meeting at the Faculty of Pain Medicine of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA) Annual Pain Medicine Symposium in Kuala Lumpur.
That event followed the recent release of a report from the Faculty of Pain Medicine of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists that found one in five people in Australia and New Zealand adults suffer from chronic pain, costing New Zealand more than diabetes and dementia.
Dr Christelis said failure to adopt the new techniques would deny patients meaningful medical advances but neuromodulation carried risks.
“The art is making sure that the right patient gets the right form of nerve stimulation, at the right time, for the right disease process, with the smallest possible risk.”
