Treatment History
For nearly 50 years, epidural spinal cord stimulation has been used as a relatively standard and low-risk procedure for chronic pain management. About a decade ago, researchers discovered that the use of epidural stimulation in paraplegic patients could recover some voluntary movements. Our study called E-STAND (Epidural Stimulation After Neurologic Damage) has verified that epidural spinal cord stimulation can restore some volitional movement and improve cardiovascular, bowel, and bladder function.
Current Study
Currently, E-STAND is the second largest study in the world to study the use of epidural spinal cord stimulation to restore function after thoracic spinal cord injury. Our goal is to understand if this therapy works for a large variety of people after spinal cord injury to test if this therapy should be used for everyone after injury. Our study has already enrolled patients with the most severe injuries, oldest average age, and the longest time since the initial injury compared to previous studies. Our research team seeks to learn the practical clinical application of this therapy for the estimated more than 300,000 individuals living with chronic spinal cord injury in just the U.S. alone. We hope to test if this therapy improves the quality of life after spinal cord injury.
We understand that no two patients are the same, so we have designed our study to personalize the therapy for each patient. Rather than uprooting a patient’s life, we created a study that minimizes the amount of time each participant spends in our lab. A majority of our data collection is done remotely through a tablet application. Participants come to our site for follow-ups every month where our engineers and medical doctors use the data to optimize the therapy. In this way, we seek to individualize the treatment, focusing on the quality of life improvements that the patient is most interested in.
Examples of quality of life improvements include:
- Reduced spasticity in muscles
- Voluntary movement
- Core support
- Bowel and urinary control
- Cardiovascular improvement
If this therapy is determined to be effective for the treatment of chronic spinal cord injury, then our trial will be a model of how it can effectively be used in clinical practice.
Patient video testimonial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9v-dZ0qlBg&t=45s
Patient videos: Darrow YouTube Page
Scientific Publications
- David Darrow, David Balser, Theoden I. Netoff, Andrei Krassioukov, Aaron Phillips, Ann Parr, Uzma Samadani. Spinal Cord Stimulation facilitates immediate restoration of dormant motor and autonomic supraspinal pathways after chronic neurologically complete spinal cord injury. Journal of Neurotrauma
See our Blog page for study updates as they happen