• World Neurosurg · Nov 2020

    Case Reports

    Sustainable effects of 8-year intermittent spinal cord stimulation in a patient with thalamic post-stroke pain.

    • Wenying Xu, Chencheng Zhang, Bomin Sun, and Dianyou Li.
    • Department of Neurosurgery, Ruijin Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China; Center for Functional Neurosurgery, Ruijin Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China.
    • World Neurosurg. 2020 Nov 1; 143: 223-227.

    BackgroundCentral post-stroke pain (CPSP) is a central neuropathic pain syndrome secondary to a cerebrovascular accident. CPSP treatment usually begins with medication; however, this is associated with inadequate pain relief and adverse effects. Neurostimulation therapies, including spinal cord stimulation (SCS), have been developed for improved pain relief. We report a patient with thalamic pain who underwent 8-year cervical SCS in an intermittent mode.Case DescriptionA 71-year-old man presented with left thalamic stroke that caused persistent allodynia and "pricking" sensations at right-side extremities. The pain did not respond well to several pain therapies, including medication, acupuncture, and nerve-blocking anesthesia. Subsequently, the severe and refractory pain caused dystonia in his right hand and seriously hindered recovery and rehabilitation of stroke sequelae. Further, the pain induced depression and severe anxiety mood status and had an effect on his functional activities of life. After SCS device implantation, the patient received intermittent stimulation with 90 minutes on/30 minutes off. A significant decrease in the patient's pain was observed with no serious side effects. After subtle programming of the implantable pulse generator, a significant improvement of his dystonia and affective mood was observed. Intermittent SCS allowed for persistent stimulation for 8 years. Taken together, this intervention allowed for an acceptable improvement of his functional quality of life.ConclusionsOur findings indicate that SCS is safe and efficacious for CPSP, including thalamic stroke pain. Long-term intermittent stimulation can preserve implantable pulse generator battery life and achieve sustained improvement of a patient's pain, movement, and affective mood status.Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…