Robert Levy, MD, PhD, Director of the Marcus Neuroscience Institute (MNI) at Boca Raton Regional Hospital is the first physician in the state of Florida to use the latest and most advanced form of spinal cord stimulation (SCS) as a method to treat patients with chronic back and leg pain. The Senza® SCS system, developed by Nevro Corporation, is a spinal cord stimulator that has demonstrated superior results as compared to standard stimulation systems, with patients achieving approximately a 50% greater improvement in pain score than those with traditional SCS therapy.

 

Pain in general is the most common reason for physician visits in the United States. Chronic pain can significantly interfere with a person's quality of life and functionality. There are a variety of treatment options for chronic pain that range from medications to surgical interventions.

 

SCS offers a treatment option for chronic back and leg pain that uses electrical pulses to alter the transmission of abnormal pain signals to the brain. The Senza System is the only SCS that provides high-frequency (HF), short-duration electrical pulses to the spinal cord at a rate of up to 10,000 per second to effectively block pain.

Conventional, low-frequency stimulation provides typically between 40 and 60 electrical pulses per second and is intended to mask the pain through paresthesias, which are tingling feelings that overlap the pain distribution. In essence, low frequency SCS replaces or lessens one acute sensation with another less debilitating yet distracting one. On the contrary, with the Senza System's use of HF, short bursts of electricity attack the pain signal at its very source.

 

"It is rare to come across a medical technology that produces such excellent clinical results versus comparative therapies and I am excited to incorporate this into our capabilities at MNI," said Dr. Levy.

 

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