Are There Surgeries That Can Be Performed On My Nerves To Treat Pain?

— -- Question: Are There Surgeries That Can Be Performed On My Nerves To Treat Pain?

Answer: Yes, there are surgeries, and I think commonly, if we look at a peripheral nerve for instance, sometimes a surgeon will try to just dissect down to where that nerve is and free up some of the tissues around it. He may be able to diagnose at that time a neuroma, which is an abnormality of a nerve where it becomes deformed and grossly enlarged.

In some cases, those neuromas can actually be cut, and they can take the distal end of the nerve that remains and bury it into a muscle, and in some cases that can be useful. But oftentimes, these things are not quite as simple as they might seem.

There and again, what we try to do oftentimes, if those sorts of operations fail, or if we can't relieve what might be causing pressure around the nerve, or perhaps a tumor that's grown into the nerve. If we can't really get around that by making the nerve function more normally again, what we might do is actually try to stimulate the nerve, which I've already referred to.

And again, that would be something like peripheral nerve stimulation, or potentially even spinal cord stimulation. Both of those are not going to involve any additional drugs for the patient, any additional therapies most of the time, and it should be manageable just with ongoing use of that device.

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