Paresthesia-Free Spinal Cord Stimulation Occurring at Lower Frequencies and Sweet Spot Searching Using Paresthesia

Abstract

Methods and systems for testing and treating spinal cord stimulation (SCS) patients are disclosed. Patients are eventually treated with sub-perception (paresthesia free) therapy. However, supra-perception stimulation is used during “sweet spot searching” during which active electrodes are selected for the patient. This allows sweet spot searching to occur much more quickly and without the need to wash in the various electrode combinations that are tried. After selecting electrodes using supra-perception therapy, therapy is titrated to sub-perception levels using the selected electrodes. Such sub-perception therapy has been investigated using pulses at or below 10 kHz, and it has been determined that a statistically significant correlation exists between pulse width (PW) and frequency (F) in this frequency range at which SCS patients experience significant reduction in symptoms such as back pain. Beneficially, sub-perception stimulation at such low frequencies significantly lowers power consumption in the patient's neurostimulator.

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