Spinal implant ‘zaps’ local man’s back pain

Dr. Todd Warrick inserts the wire lead into the battery pack that is inserted under the skin to manage back pain.

By JOE PERRY
Item Staff Writer
jperry@theitem.com

Paul Siegel has had back problems since 1961 and has tried just about everything.

Nothing worked.

But once the retired 66-year-old Wedgefield resident got a spinal stimulation implant, his life changed.

“I’ve had 10 neurosurgeons around the country tell me that they would not operate on my back — I’ve had too many problems back there. The best way to say it is I’m a walking lawsuit,” Siegel said recently, laughing, after a recent check-up visit with Dr. Todd Warrick. A 32-year-old interventional pain specialist, Warrick is one of the most recent additions to Tuomey Regional Medical Center’s medical staff.

The Charleston native looks to blaze new trails in a relatively young medical field — 30 to 40 years ago, he said, anesthesiologists were simply injecting cortisone into patients’ backs to treat back pain and sciatica, whereas the last 20 years have seen physicians focus on making treatments less invasive “and more palatable.”

“I think when people think of pain management, typically they think of a doctor in a shady office with a prescription pad and a line out the front,” Warrick said, laughing. “Really what I do is somewhere in the gray zone between medical management and hard-core surgery for all kinds of stuff, but primarily spinal conditions.”

Warrick draws on multiple specialties — radiology, neurosurgery, anesthesia and said he “takes a hodgepodge of techniques,” from injections to minimally invasive surgery in treating patients.

As for Siegel, who suffers from degenerative back disease with arthritis of his spine, hips, neck and shoulders, the implant he received in late July has changed his life. After serving 20 years in the Air Force, he sold trucks and then worked as a recruiter for an insurance agency and was forced into retirement in 1993 for medical reasons. A car accident that year, he said, merely exacerbated his medical condition. Thinking back, he remembers getting shots in his back that year, he said, which resulted in his lying in bed in the fetal position “crying like a baby” from the excruciating pain.

Those days are gone.

Siegel said after he had tried just about anything and everything, he spoke with “the good doctor,” referring to Warrick, about the spinal stimulator implant, which essentially zaps pain along the spine. He and his wife Diane talked it over, and after lengthy conversations with the company’s sales representative, he had a trial stimulator installed — it only took about an hour — which he admits was painful in the aftermath.

Two days later, though, he was a new man.

“When I woke up, I jumped out of bed and have not looked back since,” he said. “My friends ask, ‘What happened?’”

Warrick explained there’s a device, about the size of a small pager or I-Pod in Siegel’s buttocks that uses electrical stimulation to zap pain via a remote control device. The battery is charged every two or three days, and Siegel calls it “a pacemaker, only for my back.”

Prior to July, he could barely walk, he said, compared to the five laps he and his wife now walk around a path near their home for regular exercise.

“I’m grateful,” he said, smiling broadly, “like no one can believe.”

Warrick said physicians and researchers looked at a pacemaker working well on the heart, and decided to “try it somewhere else.”

“The technology has been out for about 20 years, but only in the last five to 10 years have the tools and the technology gotten small enough, sophisticated enough, to really help people like you,” he said, looking at Siegel.

Pain is a specialty, Warrick said, where he sees many patients who are depressed and stressed out, and are their own “worst enemy from multiple standpoints.”

“Paul is refreshing,” he said, “he’s got a good perspective, a good sense of humor, and he’s able to sort of have realistic expectations, and we can really, occasionally, knock something out of the park.”

Siegel grins.

“I’m ready to rock ’n’ roll,” he said, patting Warrick on the shoulder.


Contact Staff Writer Joe Perry at jperry@theitem.com or (803) 774-1272.