09/28/2010 Brain stimulation may relieve chronic pain
in early antiquity People experimented with electrical impulses to pain. Your energy source was then deliver fish surges. After this treatment approach has long been forgotten, as described in the mid-1960s, the two researchers Ronald Melzack and Patrick Wall for the first time scientific the operation, which makes the functional neurosurgery now utilized. Various sensory information is transmitted via parallel pathways that interfere with each other. If certain nerve selectively stimulated by electrical impulses, these signals drive out to the switchboard of the spinal cord and brain, other stimuli that are perceived as pain.
At Tübingen University Hospital have been dealt early on with the new possibilities. In the past five years, extensive clinical experience has been gained with the process. Today is the Tübingen Neurosurgery nationwide reference center for neuro-stimulation, patients from all over Germany and from Foreign look here for help.
The results are convincing: "Patients with chronic pain where surgery and medication or physical therapy were not successful, may be of the spinal cord stimulation improvement hope," said Dr. Guilherme Lepski, specialist of the Tübingen University Hospital for neurosurgery.
In a small operation under local anesthesia, an electrode is inserted into the spinal canal. Even during the surgery the surgeon verified the correct position of the electrode by electrical signals that produce the pain of the body affected by a slight tingling sensation. After the operation provides a small, first outside of the body-mounted pulse generator signals. For one week, then the pain-inhibiting effect in the everyday life of the patient is observed. If successful, then the switch will be transplanted under the skin.
"80 percent of all patients are satisfied with the outcome and experience the intensity of pain at least half reduced," said Dr. Guilherme Lepski. For chronic pain-ridden patients, this means a significant improvement in their quality of life. The therapy has - apart from that produced tingling that is not perceived as unpleasant by the patients - virtually no side effects. In any event, no undesirable: In patients with vascular constriction, the electrical impulses even lead to an expansion of blood vessels.
is in question * this new therapy, the cost is taken when indicated by the health insurance, for a variety of chronic pain patients. Successfully treated patients were already after back surgery, had been left behind despite Eliminated in which compression of the nerve root pain in the back or legs. Even with circulation problems in the feet or hands, as with peripheral arterial occlusive disease (PAOD) or inflammatory diseases, the method has proved, as in chronic angina pectoris, the complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) and many forms of neuralgia.
* Patients with chronic (at least six months any) pain, tel 0 70 71 / 29-8 66 79 29-8 64 49 or an appointment in the outpatient department of neurosurgery at the University Hospital agreed. The condition is that before conservative and medical therapy attempts have been made and psychological or psychosomatic disorders were excluded as the cause of the pain doctor.
contact for more information
University Hospital Tübingen
Department of Neurosurgery
Dr. Guilherme Lepski
Hoppe-Seyler-Str. 3, 72076 Tübingen @ Med.uni-tuebingen.de
Guilherme.Lepski
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