Spinal cord stimulation-based combo therapy improves outcomes in patients with chronic pain

Long-term term improvement in chronic pain can be achieved with the simultaneous use of customized sub-perception field and paresthesia-based spinal cord stimulation (SCS), according to a study.

This study included 89 patients with chronic pain for ≥6 months who were treated with either combination therapy (n = 41) or monotherapy involving only SCS therapy producing tingling sensation (n = 48). Overall, 88% of patients in the combination group and 71% of patients in the monotherapy group met the primary endpoint of ≥50% pain reduction without increased opioids at the 3-month follow-up. The responder rate at 1 year was 84% and 85% at 2 years (with all SCS therapy options available).

“Analysis of functional activities or disability showed that patients improved from ‘severely disabled’ at study start to ‘moderately disabled’ after 2 years, indicating that effective long-term improvement can be achieved using SCS-based combination therapy for chronic pain,” the authors concluded.

Reference
Wallace MS, North JM, Phillips GM, et al. Combination therapy with simultaneous delivery of spinal cord stimulation modalities: COMBO randomized controlled trial. Pain Manag. 2023;doi:10.2217/pmt-2022-0101. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 36866658.