Comparison of Spinal Cord Stimulators from Boston Sci., Nevro

Posted by elsa @elsa, Jul 26, 2020

I've lived with severe chronic pain in my legs and lumbar spine for the past ten years. Was on opiates for 8 years until I attended & graduated from Mayo's 3-week Pain Rehab Program in 2018. That program helped immensely and I got off 5 meds I used to take, including morphine and hydrocodone. Unfortunately, in the last year my spine health has worsened. I now have a toxic mix of scar tissue (from a dural tear during a microdiscectomy), stenosis at multiple levels, bulging discs and scoliosis. I am now scheduled to do a trial of Boston Scientific's "Wave Writer" SCS on August 10, 2020. Unfortunately my doctor did not guide me in the selection of this manufacturer/model. I did my own research. I considered doing trials of Nevro's HF-10 and Boston Scientific's Wave Writer. Finally decided on the Wave Writer.
I'm posting here to ask for people's knowledge of and/or experience with these two SCS's. Please reply if you can share any information. Thanks!

Interested in more discussions like this? Go to the Spine Health Support Group.

Profile picture for Berk @gba

Did you try this?
"Often, people with neuropathy are forced to seek out invasive procedures – surgery, implanted devices (SCS) or resort to the use of powerful narcotics, such as Ketamine, where success has been uneven, but side effects are often debilitating. In 2010, as a pain management provider, I wasn’t comfortable recommending these types of ‘next level’ neuropathic pain treatment for medication-and treatment-resistant patients. I knew there had to be a better option and began looking in Europe for new pain therapies which were drug-free.

Through a contact in Italy, I discovered scrambler therapy, which checked all the boxes—no side effects, painless to undergo, highly effective for neuropathic pain treatment and, most importantly, drug-free.

Our goal was simply to help lessen our local patients’ chronic pain.

But after sharing a few positive scrambler therapy patient outcomes on our website, we quickly began attracting patients from coast-to-coast and around the globe, including Australia, the UK, South Africa and South America for neuropathic pain treatment.

Today, we treat children, adults and seniors battling fibromyalgia, neuropathy after chemotherapy treatment, complex regional pain syndrome and pain that develops after surgery or from diabetes. We have also treated many people who developed chronic nerve pain after a shingles diagnosis (PHN).

How Scrambler Therapy Works

When someone is injured, the brain sets up a process to heal the injury. For example, cells carry away dead tissue or blood flow is increased to the area. Eventually, the brain realizes the injury has healed, and it cuts off the pain message.

For some people, the brain never sends the all-important message, “there’s no more injury here, we’re healed, so you can stop sending that pain signal.”

That’s where the ‘scrambler’ therapy device comes in. Using small electrodes judiciously placed in the region of the injury (but not directly on the pain site), the freestanding technology sends a mild “no pain” message to the brain through the electrodes.

This message overrides the brain’s pain message signal and corrects it, over a series of one treatment daily for an average of 10 days, to a ‘there’s no pain here” message.

In many cases, pain is lessened for the patient as soon as the first scrambler therapy treatment.

Regardless of how long they've had the condition, many patients are completely pain-free at the end of the 10 days of treatment. This is unmatched by any other neuropathic pain treatment.

Calmare Therapy is Safe and Effective

There have been clinical trials performed at several high-profile research facilities here in the United States, including at the Mayo Clinic and at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Positive results have been found with CRPS, Chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy, low back pain, post-herpetic neuralgia. There have also been many clinical reports of successful treatment of fibromyalgia.

We keep an updated list of these studies on our Clinical Trials web page, so people with specific neuropathic pain conditions can use them as a reference.

When a skilled clinician places the leads in the optimal positions on each trial participant’s body, in accordance with their original injury site, the results are excellent.

For more detailed information, you can watch this very informative hour-long Grand Rounds review (by doctors for doctors) about scrambler therapy, “Calmare Therapy – An Innovative Pain Treatment: What Is It?” presented by the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, a partnership between Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston.

The Calmare MC-5A device has been tested in multi-year clinical trials at some of the most prestigious research institutions, including the Massey Cancer Institute at Virginia Commonwealth University, Mayo Clinic and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). In addition, it has received clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)."

Editor's Note:
Quoted from
- Calmare Therapy for Neuropathic Pain Relief https://www.paintreatmentdirectory.com/posts/calmare-therapy-for-neuropathic-pain-relief

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About 10 years ago, I had Calmare protocol administered by a pain management doctor (in staten Island, NY) and it did not alleviate my neuropathy condition. More recently, I had 25+ treatments with the RST Sanexas. This also did not work. Have improvements been made to the Calmare technology since then? I've had peripheral neuropathy in my feet for about 10 + years.

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Profile picture for martyk @martyk

Thank you. But it's 1hr. 15 minutes each way for 10 days in North Jersey traffic, not two days. Did the pain pump work for you?

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After 4 or 5 adjustments to increase the pump's output, I was feeling pretty good up. Even my wife noted that I seemed to have more pep in my step. Then, about 2 and a half weeks ago, the effect began to diminish. I went in for another adjustment about a week and a half ago, but it did not help, Even delivering a bolus has little to no effect. I am going back in today to get the pump refilled and have the pump and catheter checked to see if the meds are actually being delivered to where they are supposed to be. I am hoping it's just a matter of a larger dose increase. Other wise, I may have to go back under the knife to have something corrected.

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Profile picture for glenjunderwood @glenjunderwood

My name is Glen and i have had the Nevro HF10 spinal stimulator implanted since Sept 1, 2021 and the company rep hasn't been able to dial it in on my terrible lower back pain yet. I have complete confidence in this unit because the temporary one that they inserted worked unbelievably well. It's been 6 months and counting with no relief thus far. I'm hoping to reach out and hear from anyone out there about their experiences with this Nevro unit. Please help if you can! Thank You!

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Thank you for sharing your experience with the pain pump. I hope the larger dose will give you more pain relief. Please keep us informed. God bless.

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Profile picture for Colleen Young, Connect Director @colleenyoung

Hi @gba, in your search for solutions for neuropathic pain, it looks like you found the above information about Calmare Therapy on this website.
– Calmare Therapy for Neuropathic Pain Relief by: Dr. Michael J. Cooney https://www.paintreatmentdirectory.com/posts/calmare-therapy-for-neuropathic-pain-relief

You might also be interested in this related discussion:
- Has anyone tried Scrambler Therapy for neuropathy or for pain? https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/calmare-scrambler-therapy-anyone/

And this Mayo patient story
- Breaking Away From Pain With the Help of ‘The Scrambler’ https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/breaking-away-from-the-pain-with-the-help-of-the-scrambler/

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Hello Colleen, Does Mayo offer the treatment scrambler Calmare? Thanks for all of your info.

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Profile picture for blc6453 @blc6453

I have a permanent Nervo HFX stimulator and I am having the same issue
The trial gave me 90 % pain relief but the permanent isn't. My rep keeps having me change settings, but I'm only getting a little relief on lower back. Yesterday she had me change the program to P2 level 6 and now I'm not getting any relief. I do not know how to reprogram it back to P1. Anyone know how I can change it back?

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Click the side power button. Then you can go up or down on the “P” (program) levels (takes 2 clicks to move up one number. You have to go through the higher numbers before it reverts back to the lower numbers.

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Profile picture for heisenberg34 @heisenberg34

After 4 or 5 adjustments to increase the pump's output, I was feeling pretty good up. Even my wife noted that I seemed to have more pep in my step. Then, about 2 and a half weeks ago, the effect began to diminish. I went in for another adjustment about a week and a half ago, but it did not help, Even delivering a bolus has little to no effect. I am going back in today to get the pump refilled and have the pump and catheter checked to see if the meds are actually being delivered to where they are supposed to be. I am hoping it's just a matter of a larger dose increase. Other wise, I may have to go back under the knife to have something corrected.

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An update on my pain pump refill/check. A new pain doctor that I had not seen before came in to do my pump refill. I asked him if he had gotten any of the messages I had sent/called in regarding having my pump checked for proper function since my pain level had suddenly increased. He was not aware of any such information. Go figure. Anyway, he did the dye test to see if the pump and associated hardware were actually delivering the meds to my soinal cord region. Yes, everything checked out ok. He said I was already at a higher level of meds than I was when my test was done! How is that possible. He didn't know. Said something about tolerance. Well, I spoke witha woman who has had a pump for over 25 years. So, end result of visit? Reduction in pump output, resulting in more pain as I am sitting he this morning. I will be forced to go back to tramadol. I have a couple of weeks' supply. After that, I don't know what I will do. Any suggestions from you subscribers out there. I had such high hopes for this pump. Now, I am feeling depressed, not knowing which way to turn.

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Profile picture for kingfish1952 @kingfish1952

About 10 years ago, I had Calmare protocol administered by a pain management doctor (in staten Island, NY) and it did not alleviate my neuropathy condition. More recently, I had 25+ treatments with the RST Sanexas. This also did not work. Have improvements been made to the Calmare technology since then? I've had peripheral neuropathy in my feet for about 10 + years.

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Having had severe neuropathy for over 7 years, I can certainly empathize with you. Mine is due to a ski fall back in 2016. Hit my lower back and buttocks pretty hard. It's been a rollercoaster ride ever since. Along with back pain I have had sciatica and severe burning og the feet. I had it under control for about 3 years with meds and a spinal cord stimulator. Then, all the pain returned in 2021. Have seen more docs than I can keep track of. I had the morphine pain pump implanted back in April of this year. It worked well for about a week, and then began to lose its effectiveness. I am back on Tramadol (after being able to wean myself off it when the pain pimp was giving me decent relief). If they ever deny me access to this drug (and I only take 1 50 mg. tab 3 times a day), It will be interesting to see WHAT they do put me on.
Have you tried a spinal cord stimulator? You can do a trial to see if it gives you any pain relief.

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Profile picture for glenjunderwood @glenjunderwood

My name is Glen and i have had the Nevro HF10 spinal stimulator implanted since Sept 1, 2021 and the company rep hasn't been able to dial it in on my terrible lower back pain yet. I have complete confidence in this unit because the temporary one that they inserted worked unbelievably well. It's been 6 months and counting with no relief thus far. I'm hoping to reach out and hear from anyone out there about their experiences with this Nevro unit. Please help if you can! Thank You!

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Yes, I have a SCS in my back after the trial appeared to work. Regretably,, its not cutting it for me and at times seems to worsen the pain by overstimulating the nerves. the spinal doctor told me that the SCS is for pain only and will not mitigate the neuropathy symptoms (numbness, tingling etc). So, I usually have it turned off.

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Profile picture for glenjunderwood @glenjunderwood

My name is Glen and i have had the Nevro HF10 spinal stimulator implanted since Sept 1, 2021 and the company rep hasn't been able to dial it in on my terrible lower back pain yet. I have complete confidence in this unit because the temporary one that they inserted worked unbelievably well. It's been 6 months and counting with no relief thus far. I'm hoping to reach out and hear from anyone out there about their experiences with this Nevro unit. Please help if you can! Thank You!

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I had my Nevro implanted in April. Still working with rep to get the best placement. It definitely helps. But so far, not complete coverage of pain. So the rep is combining settings snd I am trying that. I find it best to change to a new setting right at bedtime because new settings always have some pain at first that eventually fades. I sleep well regardless so that gets me through the adjustment phase so that I get a better read on what that setting offers.

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Profile picture for glenjunderwood @glenjunderwood

My name is Glen and i have had the Nevro HF10 spinal stimulator implanted since Sept 1, 2021 and the company rep hasn't been able to dial it in on my terrible lower back pain yet. I have complete confidence in this unit because the temporary one that they inserted worked unbelievably well. It's been 6 months and counting with no relief thus far. I'm hoping to reach out and hear from anyone out there about their experiences with this Nevro unit. Please help if you can! Thank You!

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I have Nevro spinal implant and it's just not working as good as the trial did. I've had it about a year. I'm giving up. Just don't want to go through surgery to take it out. I pray someone gets relief from theirs. Prayers for all.

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