ARTICLE SUMMARY:
With 40% of spinal fusion surgeries failing to relieve low back and leg pain, SynerFuse adds neuromodulation to traditional methods in a novel yet intuitive implant.
Back pain is so common in the US that sources estimate between 39% and as many as 80% of adults have suffered from it in the past three months. Of those who see a physician for treatment, more than 570,000 per year undergo spinal fusion surgery to alleviate pressure caused by a mechanical instability (bone-on-bone or bone-on-nerve) along the vertebral column. Chronic neck and leg pain may also lead a patient down the spinal fusion pathway, which SynerFuse CEO Justin Zenanko calls “the therapy of last resort,” typically following multiple attempts to resolve the pain with physical therapy, cortisone injections, drugs, or other means. Even so, about 40% of fusion patients do not see a reduction in neuropathic pain, and they are considered to have failed back surgery syndrome, the treatment of which costs the healthcare system close to $20 billion annually.
