peripheral nerve stimulation
What is peripheral nerve stimulation?
Your body has 43 pairs of nerves that control your motor coordination, movement, and sensation. When damaged they can bring about crippling and excruciating pain. While treating chronic neuropathic pain is challenging, it is not impossible when you come to Portland Pain and Spine.
One of those pain management solutions is peripheral nerve stimulation. The procedure includes the placement of electrodes along the course of those damaged peripheral nerves, which produce a low voltage current. These currents block your brain’s ability to sense the pain that you were feeling.
This pain management treatment has been successful for many patients in which conservative measures did not help.
What does the procedure look like?
Depending on your comfort level, the peripheral nerve stimulation procedure can be done with or without IV sedation.
Using a local anesthetic, your doctor will place a thin stimulator lead along the painful nerves. This lead is connected to a battery which is under your skin, yet discreet and barely visible.
The device releases electrical stimuli to the damaged nerves, when turned on.
The entire procedure takes less than a couple of hours to complete.