Looking for long-term relief for chronic back and leg pain? A new option could be on the cards…
Greater choice could soon be available for people seeking relief from chronic back and leg pain, a team highlights in Anesthesiology.
Spinal cord stimulation is an increasingly common therapy for difficult to treat chronic pain in the back and legs. It delivers electric pulses to the spinal cord through a small device implanted under the skin and is an important option for people who might otherwise need opioids or back surgery.
Now experts have found that people who were given a novel high frequency form of spinal cord stimulation experienced greater long-term relief for chronic back and leg pain, when compared to a traditional low frequency form of the therapy.
The new treatment, called HF10 therapy, uses high frequency pulses of 10,000 Hz (traditional spinal cord stimulation uses frequencies of 40–60 Hz). HF10 therapy provides pain relief without paresthesia, which is a tingling or buzzing that masks a person’s perception of pain and is typical of traditional spinal cord stimulation. Some people find these sensations distracting or uncomfortable, which limits their use. So finding a new intervention that does not rely on paresthesia to mask pain has the potential to improve pain relief and quality of life.
The new study
Researchers examined 171 people with chronic back or leg pain; 90 people were given HF10 therapy and 81 people had traditional spinal cord stimulation.
After three months, 85% of back pain and 83% of leg pain patients in the HF10 therapy group had a 50% reduction in pain or greater, and no-one experienced paresthesia. In the traditional spinal cord stimulation group, 44% of back pain and 56% of leg pain patients had a 50% reduction in pain.
HF10 therapy remained more effective than traditional SCS over the 12 month study period. More people in the HF10 therapy group reported being “very satisfied” with their pain relief (55% percent versus 32%).
The implications
Over 1.5 billion people worldwide have chronic pain, with lower back pain being the most frequent condition affecting 23–26% of the population.
“This is the first long-term study to compare the safety and effectiveness of high frequency and traditional spinal cord stimulation therapy for back and leg pain,” explains Prof Leonardo Kapural, lead study author. “Chronic back and leg pain have long been considered difficult to treat and current pain relief options such as opioids have limited effectiveness and commonly known side effects. Given the prevalence of chronic pain, high frequency spinal cord stimulation is an exciting advance for our patients.”
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Image credit: Minh Hoang
