A recent research has shown that patients suffering from diabetic neuropathy, a health condition that damages the nerve due to the occurrence of diabetes, can benefit from spinal cord stimulation therapy.
Diabetic neuropathy may result in poor quality of life and mental health issues like depression, anxiety and impaired sleep and the medications for it can be ineffective for many people or have side effects that people cannot tolerate.
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The research included 216 people who had painful diabetic neuropathy for a period of one year that were not responding to medications. Half of the people received spinal cord stimulation including regular medical treatment for six months while other half received only regular medical treatment. After six months, people had the option to switch to the other treatment. People were followed for a total of two years.
The device used in spinal cord stimulation is implanted under the skin. The device delivers electrical stimulation to the spinal cord to cut off pain signals from brain. After receiving spinal cord stimulation of six months, the people reported 76% decrease in their average pain amount while the people who did not receive stimulation had a 2% increase in their average amount of pain. The people reported 80% improvement in their average pain amount and 66% people had noticed an improvement in motor function, sensation and reflexes.
Moreover, the stimulation with high-frequency give more pain relief than the low-frequency stimulation. The high-frequency stimulation provides long-term pain relief with acceptable safety. It also suggests that the improvement in motor function may have disease-modifying potential.
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