New Treatment for Pain Offers Hope to Chronic Pain Sufferers

August 02, 2022, Kitchener, Ontario

Posted by: Robert Deutschmann, Personal Injury Lawyer

Dissolvable Implant Shows Promise for Pain Management

This new treatment offers hope for a targeted and less addictive treatment of pain than opioids offer.

Health Canada estimates 8 million Canadians live with chronic pain (see last week’s post) and it has enormous personal and societal costs. The monetary, emotional and physical costs are borne by the individual, friends and society at large with direct and indirect spending in the billions of dollars annually. Chronic pain is a common outcome in many car, sport, bicycle, slip and fall, and workplace accidents.

Why do we need new treatments?

Opioids which have been a frontline treatment for severe and chronic pain were once seen as safe and effective. We now recognize that the overuse and misuse of them have left hundreds of millions of people globally addicted to them. This addiction often has dramatic long-term negative impacts on lives, families and society. Opioid use does not improve long-term pain.

How does this work?

Scientists have been searching for an alternative to opioids for decades and there is hope that a new treatment has been discovered. Biomedical Engineer Dr John A. Rogers, Northwestern University believes he may have created a new treatment. Anyone who has been outdoors in the extreme cold knows that hands and feet numb as they lose heat. Dr Rogers took this concept and applied it. His creation is an implantable dissolvable device that cools the nerves in the body.

The device can be turned up or down allowing specific targeted pain relief. Using cooling properties, the device numbs specific nerves connecting the brain and spinal cord to the body. This cooling acts to block the pain signals to the brain and stops the pain sensation in specific body parts.

The device is a 5 mm device that has an end encircling the nerves. One end protrudes from the skin and attaches to a pump that allows cooling fluid to enter and circulate in the body. A temperature sensor allows clinicians to adjust the cooling up or down. The device is fully dissolvable which means that it reduces the risks of infection during and after surgical removal and after-care needs. The device has worked in mice

Researchers envision that this device would be used in hospitals post-surgically in place of opiates and other addictive pain management drugs.

About Deutschmann Law

Deutschmann Law serves South-Western Ontario with offices in Kitchener-Waterloo, Cambridge, Woodstock, Brantford, Stratford and Ayr. The law practice of Robert Deutschmann focuses almost exclusively in personal injury and disability insurance matters. For more information, please visit www.deutschmannlaw.com or call us at 1-519-742-7774.

It is important that you review your accident benefit file with one of our experienced personal injury / car accident lawyers to ensure that you obtain access to all your benefits which include, but are limited to, things like physiotherapy, income replacement benefits, vocational retraining and home modifications.