Science
Back Pain
Every year 100´s of millions of people experience back pain and for 10s of million the back pain is chronic. For most people who suffers from chronic back pain conservative treatments will considerably improve their quality of life. But for many patients with damaged or worn out discs the only option is to undergo a spinal fusion surgery. That is when the damaged disc is removed and the two or more spinal vertebrae is fused together to decompress the spinal nerves and stabilize the spinal column.
Spinal fusion
Worldwide 1.5M spinal surgeries are performed every year. Spinal surgery has a significant failure rate as the bony fusion of the vertebrae often fails (called a non-union) and instability in the spinal column persist and continue to compress the spinal nerves. Leading to excruciating pain for the patient and considerably lowers the patients quality of life.
How bone is formed
When bones are experiencing mechanical stress and demands they will adept and remodel to be able to meet the demand put on them, this is called Wolff´s Law.
The mechanical stress induces a small electric current that recruits the cells that remodels bone, called osteoblasts and osteoclast.
Bones & electrical conductivity
Bones don’t conduct electricity very well. The more and/or denser the bone, the higher is the electrical resistance.
We can stimulate and measure bone healing
By incorporating an wireless electrical stimulation system into standard spinal fusion implant cage we can induce an local electrical field around the implant that stimulate the bones to fuse. We can also measure the bone healing in real-time by measuring the impedance in-between each electrode site. And relay this information to the physician.