The Future of Pain Management: Benefits of Minimally Invasive Neuromodulation Surgery and Muscle Res

Nearly one-quarter of adults in the United States — 24.3%, to be exact — report chronic pain, and 8.5% report high-impact pain that’s limiting their lives. While chronic pain comes from many different issues, lower back pain, neck pain, and peripheral nerve pain account for more than their fair share.

By the numbers, nearly 40% of Americans report back pain and 30 million have some degree of peripheral neuropathy (PN).

What all of these people have in common is that they just want relief from the pain. 

If this sounds familiar and you feel that you’ve exhausted your treatment options, Dr. Ali H. Mesiwala  wants to draw your attention to some exciting and emerging techniques for combating spine and nerve pain — spinal cord stimulation, peripheral nerve stimulation, and muscle restorative therapy.

So, before you resign yourself to invasive corrective surgery or just gritting your teeth and dealing with the pain, learn whether neuromodulation surgery or muscle restoration can help you move again without pain.

Combating pain through spinal cord stimulation

Let’s first look at how spinal cord stimulation is helping many of our patients to find meaningful relief from pain that originates along the spine.

Let’s say you have chronic lower back pain due to degenerative disc disease or spinal stenosis, which are common degenerative conditions that compress nerves in the lumbar spine. Not only is the pain in your lower back, it’s following the nerves down into your buttocks and legs so that moving has become a painful endeavor.

With a spinal cord stimulator, we insert electrodes in the area where the nerves exit your spine and are compressed. Powered by a battery pack, these electrodes emit mild electrical impulses that can disrupt the pain signaling in the overactive nerves.

When we insert the spinal cord stimulator, we do so in a minimally invasive procedure, and you can go home the same day.

Relieving peripheral nerve pain through neuromodulation

Whether you have diabetes-related neuropathy, nerve damage due to infection, amputation-related nerve pain, trigeminal neuralgia, or some other hard-to-treat nerve pain, peripheral nerve stimulation (PNS) might be able to help.

With PNS, we insert electrodes into the area where the damaged nerves are sending pain signals to your brain. These electrodes emit electrical impulses that interfere with the pain messaging, helping you to find relief from ongoing pain.

Muscle restoration therapy

While your spine might be the foundation of your back, it hardly works alone. Your spine is stabilized by some very strong core and back muscles that can provide a good deal of support and take the pressure off of your spine.

Unfortunately, when you’re experiencing back pain, the last thing you’re able to do is engage in strengthening exercises, even though they can go a long way toward pain relief. So, these muscles, including your multifidus muscles, can atrophy and make your lower back pain even worse.

The good news is that we have a way to strengthen these stabilizing muscles through muscle restoration therapy. With this neuromodulation technique, we insert leads and a pulse generator that strengthen these key muscles by causing contractions in them.

All you need to do is activate the pulse generator twice a day, for about 30 minutes each time, and your muscles will gradually strengthen and better support your spine.

In one study, 64% of participants who engaged in muscle restoration therapy experienced at least a 50% improvement in pain, and 52% of participants reported low back pain resolution.

As you can see, minimally invasive neuromodulation and muscle restoration therapy can represent an entirely new road to pain relief and one that we invite you to explore. 

Dr Ali H. Mesiwala provides a comprehensive set of solutions to treating patients with chronic pain. As a neurosurgeon who focuses on spinal conditions, he is acutely aware that pain can be debilitating on all aspects of life. Pain by it self is a unique phenomenon that does not always necessitate a spinal operation to correct/reconstruct the anatomy. Pain uniquely can be treated with a variety of options, like the ones listed above. Dr. Mesiwala is part of the faculty for all of the treatment options stated above and will discuss them with you as a treatment option after a comprehensive examination and evaluation. 

To get started, please contact one of our offices in Newport Beach, Marina del Rey, or Rancho Cucamonga, California, to set up a consultation.