Spinal Cord Stimulation for Diabetic Neuropathy

If you live with diabetes, then you may have experienced painful diabetic neuropathy or PDN.

It's a type of nerve damage that causes numbness, burning, or tingling most often in the feet and legs, and sometimes in the hands and arms. According to William S. Raoofi, M.D., a board certified pain management specialist with The Center for Interventional Pain Medicine at Mercy, there's a new treatment that can help, spinal cord stimulation. The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) has approved this device which is implanted in the spinal cord.

"I describe it as kind of like a pacemaker that people have for the heart, but for the spinal cord. Instead of modulating electrical stimulation to the heart, it's modulating electrical signals that are sent in the spinal cord. So, we can essentially scramble or turn down certain nerve fibers that are carrying pain signals," Dr. Raoofi said.

Dr. Raoofi notes that the outpatient procedure reduces and may even eliminate the need for oral pain medications. Patients can adjust its intensity based on their pain level and they can also recharge it wirelessly.

View Dr. Raoofi's interview about spinal cord stimulation for relieving diabetic neuropathy pain.