Long-term use of pain pills is more than a health hazard, they are extremely addictive and lose their effectiveness over time. So are they really the best option for long-term pain management? New technology offers an alternative that goes straight to the spine and nerve endings, creating significant  improvement in much less time.

Pain Management in the Technology Age

Doctors can now use an electronic device that work with wires implanted in the spinal cord to deliver electronic pulses at regular intervals. The objective is to confuse the pain signal before the patient can even feel it, and significantly reduce chronic pain.

Tiny wires implanted in the spinal cord can deliver electronic pulses that eliminate pain in two-thirds to three-quarters of patients deemed suitable for the surgery, says Dr. Brett Stacey, a pain physician at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. Though electrical stimulation treatments for pain have been around since the 1970s, they are currently not widely used on patients with extensive nerve damage – ideal candidates for the procedure.

Researchers are also experimenting with electrodes implanted at the site of the perceived pain, which could mean against a knee or elbow, or right in the brain in the case of severe, persistent headaches.

How Electronic Stimulation Therapy Works

According to a story in the Chicago Tribune, nerves send sensations of pain and touch from all over the body to the brain via the spinal cord. The brain then interprets the signal as pain or touch. However, when a nerve is injured that transmission can get scrambled, causing some people to feel even a light touch as searing pain.

The electrode procedure tries to obstruct one electrical transmission — for example, the nerve signal from a throbbing knee or lower back — with another electrical transmission, artificially delivered by a pacemaker-like device. This interferes with the pain message heading toward the brain, and interrupts the pain response.

"You substitute a different sensation for the pain," says Dr. F. Michael Ferrante, director of the UCLA Pain Management Center.

Surgeons place the electrodes in the epidural space, the outermost layer of the spinal canal -- the same area anesthesiologists target with drugs in women during labor. Wires inserted under the skin connect the electrodes to pacemaker-like device an inch or so in diameter, implanted in the abdomen. Patients get a remote control to modify their settings.

How Patients Respond to Electronic Stimulation Therapy

People with these electrical implants say the pain is still there, but the replacement feeling, called paresthesia, overrides it. They describe the new feeling in various ways, as a warm or cool sensation, or like a tingling or a cat purring, Ferrante says.

Electronic stimulation  is really helpful for patients suffering aftereffects of spinal surgery as well as those who have pain after a bout with shingles. Electrode implants do not work for all kinds of pain or for all people, and they carry the risks inherent in any surgical procedure, so doctors carefully select patients most likely to benefit, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Usually doctors will consider electronic treatment when standard pain pills fail to reduce pain.  Doctors usually start with a trial stimulator (no surgery required), before permanently implanting a device.