27 Aug Press Release: IPI Offering Revolutionary SCS Systems
Illinois Pain Institute Offers the First and Only Spinal Cord Stimulation Systems
for Painful Conditions Designed for Full-Body Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Safety*
Innovation Provides Chronic Pain Patients with SureScan® MRI Systems
Unprecedented Access to Standard of Diagnostic Care
Barrington, IL – August 21, 2013 – Illinois Pain Institute (IPI) in conjunction with Barrington Pain & Spine Institute announced it is offering patients the first and only implantable neurostimulation (also known as spinal cord stimulation or SCS) systems indicated for use in the treatment of chronic back and/or limb pain, sciatica, and other painful conditions that are designed for full-body Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) safety*. It is the first stimulator of its kind installed in the northwest suburbs (Kane, McHenry and Lake Counties).
An estimated 100 million Americans are affected by painful conditions, and neurostimulation treatment has become a mainstay of chronic pain management. While MRI is a standard of care in the diagnosis and treatment of major health conditions, including cancer, stroke and neurological problems, patients with neurostimulation systems implanted to manage their painful conditions were previously denied an MRI scan due to concerns about the system being affected by the large magnetic fields and radio frequency (RF) energy involved in MRI.
Dr. John Prunskis, MD, Medical Director at the Illinois Pain Institute (IPI), who is Fellowship trained in Interventional Pain Medicine, is among the first U.S. physicians to implant a patient with MRI safe leads, one of four Medtronic neurostimulation systems that recently received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for body MRI scans under specific conditions of use.
Medtronic neurostimulation therapy for painful conditions uses a medical device placed under a patient’s skin to deliver mild electrical impulses to the spinal cord, which block pain signals from reaching the brain.
Medtronic’s neurostimulation systems are specially designed to reduce or eliminate the hazards produced by the MRI environment. The devices also include a proprietary SureScan feature, which sets the device into an appropriate mode for the MRI environment.
“Until now, removal of spinal cord stimulation devices to ensure a safe body MRI scan was unavoidable,” said Dr. Prunskis. “With this technology, patients who are receiving SCS therapy to manage their painful conditions now have access to the full benefits of MRI scans without compromising their healthcare, and their physicians have the best opportunity to identify potentially life-threatening medical conditions.”
On August 20th, at Barrington Pain & Spine Institute, a 59 year-old woman with a history of chronic back and leg pain was one of the first patients nationwide to receive this advanced SCS therapy. Individual results with this therapy may vary.
MRI scans allow physicians to make a wide range of health diagnoses by viewing highly detailed images of internal organs, blood vessels, muscle, joints, tumors, areas of infection and more. MRI utilizes strong magnetic fields and radio frequency pulses to create images of structures inside the body. While CT scans are used for imaging hard materials in the body, like bones, MRI scans are used to image soft tissue.
As advancements in technology have increased accuracy, effectiveness and patient comfort, MRI use has increased dramatically in recent years. It is estimated that 60 million MRI procedures are performed worldwide each year. In the United States, the number of scans has nearly doubled in the past decade, with 32 million scans – more than one MRI per second – performed in 2011.