Medtronic or Boston Scientific spine stimulator...whats your experience?

Welcome to HW and the CP forum. You will hear good and bad about both and bad for the most part of the idea of them in general it seems. If you follow the search link at the top of the page and insert your criteria you will get many hits and numerous threads with excellent information and opinions from present and past members.plenty of good reading.

The weekend can be slow so hang in there and others will respond.

Hi Fluke,

I have a medtronics neurostimulator that was implanted nearly 5 yrs ago. I had no choice over the brand, as my doc only uses medtronics. Personally, I've had no problems with hardware itself, and both my reps are great. However, my story is a little different than most, as my stimulator was not implanted for back pain, but rather atypical facial pain (ie. eye pain). So my leads are in my face, on two branches of the trigeminal nerve, the opthalmic nerves above and below my eye. And my battery is in my chest, below my collar bone, rather than in my back, like most people.

My stimulator has certainly given me some relief, although not as much as I'd ideally like (but i knew that when I had it implanted), simply because they cannot get the leads behind my eye, where most of my pain is, because it is too dangerous. But it does help with the more superficial and referred pain.

For the first year or two, I'd say that it made a 30 - 50% difference in my pain levels. Now, that may not sound like much to most people, and normally, they won't implant a stimulator unless you have at least a 50% reduction in pain. But for me, that 30 - 50% was a huge improvement -- more than anything else I'd tried over the years. As I have had very little luck with medications and other modalities to treat my pain (hence the stimulator was a last resort). So I opted for the permanent implant.

Unfortunately, however, now, years later, I find that my stimulator now only helps maybe 10 - 30%. I don't know if my body has just "gotten used to" the stimulation, or what. Maybe my pain is worse. I don't know. But it is definitely not as effective as it once was. I don't know if this is a common occurrence with people with stimulators, or not. But even though my stimulator is less effective, personally, I'll still take that 10 - 30%, because it helps just as much as anything else (my meds also help about that same amount).

Overall, I've had a pretty positive experience with my medtronics stimulator. And even though the pain relief isn't what it once was, if I had to do it over knowing what I know now, I'd still opt to have the stimulator implanted.

You may hear a lot of negative stories on this site. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't keep them in mind while making your decision -- it's a big decision, because you are implanting a permanent piece of hardware in your body, and a lot can certainly go wrong -- but remember, that for the most part, the people who post here are people who are having difficulty with their pain, and who have had bad experiences with surgeries, implants, medications, and the like. Not too many people are posting on here because they feel great and have had super successful treatments and surgeries. So just keep that in mind as you read people's stories. For every bad story you hear, there is at least one good one out there.

The decision to have a stimulator implanted is a very personal one. And no one can really predict you how you are going to respond to it. But talk to the reps, talk to your doctors, read about things here and elsewhere. But when it comes down to it, it is all about how you feel during your trial, and whether or not the stimulator helps your pain! You are the only one who can decide whether or not it is helping. And if it helps you enough, well then, you need to decide whether or not it is worth it to pursue the permanent implant.

I wish you the best of luck if you do decide to pursue a stimulator trial. It is a big decision, but if you do give it a try, you'll know pretty quickly whether or not the stimulator is right for you.

Skeye

Skeye, do you know of any site that shows more success stories on the spine stimulator other than on the device site? Some people here have been more informative than the pamphlet I reviewed by medtronic, and it's site...as I know some 50,000 of the implants have been done, but not many have posted anything anywhere that I can find...

Hi Fluke and welcome to HW.

I've had CRPS for about 16 years now, diagnosed for about 10 and had a spinal cord stim for nearly 9. Mine is ANS/St Jude - so can't give you much feedback on BS vs Medtronic stims - but I also have a pump which is from Medtronic and in terms of dealing with reps I have have always found them to be really on the ball.

I don't really agree with Susie's comment re things going wrong with stims - but I'm in Australia and often found that my experiences (and attitudes of my dr too) are different to what seems to happen in the US. I've occasionally had issues with my SCS that aren't obviously a programming issue (which does mean a meeting with the rep, as they're the ones who are specially trained to fine tune the programming) - and at those times we've always quickly arranged a 3-way meet between my PM, rep & myself to look at all possibilities and look at what further steps (imaging, revision surgery or whatever) might be needed. for me has been absolutely worth it - the only thing that has properly knocked out the allodynia and burning, and allowed me to comfortably wear long pants again.

My experience with the surgery itself seems to have been pretty different from the norm. Most people seem to find it pretty rough, but both my trial and initial permanent implant were as easy as pie. I took paracetamol for 2 days and was back at uni full time (70+ hours a week) after a week. Couple of my revisions were a bit harder - mainly because I was awake through the whole thing and the surgeon had to break down a lot of scar tissue & was very rough with it ... but it's always been pretty right after a week or too. My pain tolerance is pretty high though ... It took me three weeks to figure out I'd broken my back :-/

Happy to try to answer any questions you might have.

Laura

I agree with Laura on how differently her experience has been because she is in another country. They do handle the SCS units & pain pumps differently that what they do here in the states.

Fortunately both Skeye & Laura have had good results but both have units for different medical conditions from your condition. What we have seen failure wise here at the forum is from members that have had them implanted for low back problems. There may be 2-3 that had them implanted for cervical issues. The problems I posted about are all in posts from various members that can be pulled up using the search feature here at the forum.

Your dr can ask some of his patients if they would be willing to speak with you about their experience with them. The dr can arrange for a meeting at his office if the patients will agree to speak with you. This would be a good way to get some info. Another thing to ask your dr is if you decide to get a unit will he continue to rx pain medication for BT pain. Some drs do & some don't. Keep us posted.