Pain relieve through chip implantation?

[pecla]

Just recently there was a program on the Spanish television in which they say they had very good results to relieve the pain tremendously with the implantation of a chip.They performed the operations in a few hospitals in Spain and an American doctor named Kenneth Aló from Houston was in Spain to improve their methods.It also worked in a patient with phantom pain.Does anybody know something about this doctor and his results in the U.S.?

[David Berg]

pecla,

I don't claim to know anything specific about Dr. Aló or chip implantation, so I'm probably not the best person to answer your question. I did a brief search for information on Dr. Aló and see that he appears to specialize in relieving pain through surgery.

I'll freely admit that I'm prejudiced against surgery as a solution to neuropathic pain (phantom pain is one form of neuropathic pain) in *most* cases, so look elsewhere if you want an unbiased view. I know of too many people who had one type of surgery for pain only to have the pain return within a couple of years, often worse than before. I'm not sure about implanting chips, but doctors have been implanting electrodes for many years. If there's anything to anchor the electrode to, then it might work alright, as long as you consider the risks of surgery in the spine or brain where the electrodes are inserted. According to Dr. Ron Tasker, one of the best practitioners I know of (now semi-retired), implants in the brain that aren't anchored tend to "drift" and require deep brain surgery to place them again. He doesn't recommend them for most patients, especially people that expect to live more than a couple of years.

That's my two cents worth. Oh yes, one thing Dr Aló wrote stood out for me. He said that "pain signals are simply electrical signals." That's really not accurate. Some people say the electrical signals and the "wiring" (nerves) are the main thing, and others say that chemical neurotransmitters are more important. But you have to acknowledge that both play an important role.

David Berg