'Our
results keep
showing it at about a 70 to 80 percent
success rate.'
— DR. JOEL SAAL
LIKE MANY of the 3 million Americans with severe back pain, Lazere's problem stemmed from a deterioration of the discs, the tissue between the vertebrae in the spine. Until now the major treatment was fusing the vertebrae — major surgery costing $50,000. But Lazere tried something completely new — an outpatient procedure that takes little more than an hour and costs $7,000. "I haven't had many patient send me flowers, but the patients are very happy," says Dr. Joel Saal.
Drs. Joel and Jeffrey Saal, brothers at Stanford Medical School, invented the procedure, called intradiscal electrothermal therapy.
HOW IT WORKS
During the procedure, doctors insert a wire around the problem disk, and heat it up. That tightens the tissue, sealing the disk — and, when it works, eliminating pain. "Our results keep showing it at about a 70 to 80 percent success rate," says Dr. Joel Saal. That's enough to win FDA approval and attract 1,500 patients nationwide so far.
Lazere says the treatment was no worse than getting a tooth filled. "I went in at 8 in the morning," he says, "left the hospital, walked out of the hospital at 10."
After that his pain gradually receded and he resumed his active life. "Each few months that go by, I find that I'm stronger," he says.
Despite the early successes with the heating procedure, many top orthopedic surgeons are not convinced it will become a standard of care in the long-term. Especially because it is so new, no one yet knows what the long-term effects will be.
"We've seen some very exciting technologies, or what we thought were exciting technologies over the years, only to, a few years later, find they weren't as appealing as we thought," says Dr. Harvinder Sandhu of the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. But if the treatment continues to work so well for people like Lazere, it could ultimately ease the suffering for millions with aching backs. ============================================
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