Spinal cord stimulation as alternative treatment for chronic post-herniorrhaphy pain.

Objective: Our goal was to determine the efficacy of spinal cord stimulation for patients with intractable post-herniorrhaphy pain which conventional treatment failed to ameliorate.

Procedure: The patients underwent an uneventful spinal cord stimulator (SCS) trial with percutaneous placement of two eight-electrode epidural leads (Medtronic Inc, Minneapolis, MN, USA) to level T7-T8-T9.

Results: Upon experiencing excellent pain relief over the next two days during the trial, the patients were implanted with permanent leads and rechargeable or non-rechargeable generators two to four weeks later and reported sustained pain relief during following 12 months after implantation.

Peripheral nerve field stimulation in the treatment of postlaminectomy syndrome after multilevel spinal surgeries.

Introduction: Chronic low back pain in patients with postlaminectomy syndrome (PLS) is challenging to treat, especially for patients who have undergone multilevel surgical procedures. Despite conservative therapy and available interventional pain procedures including spinal cord stimulation (SCS) and intrathecal therapies, patients may continue with intractable low back pain. Peripheral nerve field stimulation (PNFS) may represent an effective alternative treatment option for these patients when conventional treatments do not provide adequate relief of intractable low back pain.

Functional reactivity of cerebral capillaries.

The spatiotemporal evolution of cerebral microcirculatory adjustments to functional brain stimulation is the fundamental determinant of the functional specificity of hemodynamically weighted neuroimaging signals. Very little data, however, exist on the functional reactivity of capillaries, the vessels most proximal to the activated neuronal population. Here, we used two-photon laser scanning microscopy, in combination with intracranial electrophysiology and intravital video microscopy, to explore the changes in cortical hemodynamics, at the level of individual capillaries, in response to steady-state forepaw stimulation in an anesthetized rodent model.