The US Food and Drug Administration has approved Medtronic’s Intellis spinal cord stimulator. The company has now launched the product in the USA for the management of certain types of chronic intractable pain.
The Intellis platform was designed to overcome limitations with current spinal cord stimulation (SCS) systems, such as battery performance. It can power the Evolve workflow, which is intended to standardise guidance and balance high-dose (HD) and low-dose (LD) therapy settings. The Intellis platform can record and track patient activity 24/7, and is managed on the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 tablet interface. The company reports that this enables physicians to address the subjective and personal nature of chronic pain by monitoring progress and making modifications to better suit their patients’ therapy needs.
Duke University Medical Center in Durham, USA, is one of the first centres to implant a US patient with the Intellis device.
“Chronic pain is challenging to manage. Having real-time data can provide more information about patients’ quality of life changes,” says Lance Roy, pain medicine specialist at Duke University Medical Center. “This platform represents a welcome new option for managing some kinds of chronic pain. New non-opioid treatment options are important given the national crisis related to opioid abuse.”
