IPI Featured In Lake County News – Sun About New Spinal Cord Stimulation Procedure

IPI Featured In Lake County News – Sun About New Spinal Cord Stimulation Procedure

BARRINGTON — 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 (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, medical director at IPI 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.

For more information, call (847) 289-8822.