A 69 year-old female patient, she had a history of neuroma surgery here, you can see the scar and she comes in with significant pain?
“Yes.”
How much pain did you have before?
“I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t walk a half a block without it totally hurting and one to ten, it was a nine.
And then you had surgery. After surgery, how much pain did you have?
After three months, the neuroma grew back. And the pain was the same as it was before, within four or five months.
Okay so that is the complication of a neuroma surgery, it happens, we don’t know why, but it happens. So that’s why I tend not to do that. But this is a good example of a patient coming in with after neuroma surgery and having more pain.
So now we went to a radiofrequency ablation and with the radiofrequency ablation pretty much I stuck a probe in through here and went in and burned the nerve for you so I did not have to remake the incision. Basically, I numbed you up and burned it. So we did two treatments one month apart.
“Yes.”
So after the first treatment, how much improvement have you had?
“At least 50% and the pain from the foot being squeezed was totally gone”
So this pain being squeezed is gone as you are saying?
“It’s totally gone, yes.”
Okay because sometimes when you do this you aggravate that nerve. So, with that, pain is gone.
“That pain was totally gone. Still hurt a little bit on the bottom. Okay and then we did surgery two.”
The RFA number two?
“Right.”
Radiofrequency number two we did about a month later. How much pain did that take away?
“Right now after four weeks almost there’s no pain. I mean it’s just I wear my shoes, the one that I am supposed to wear and when I go out at night or go out for dinner I do change and wear normal shoes.”
Okay, well overall would you rate the radiofrequency as very good, very happy versus the surgery?
“Excellent versus surgery.”
Good, well you still have some swelling to go believe it or not so you’ll have some more healing to do and I think you’ll do a lot better.
“Thank you.”
You know you’ve done awesome, any words of wisdom for people thinking about radiofrequency or surgery etcetera?
“I would do the radio frequency again before the surgery. I went to Boston to do the surgery at no — did I go to Boston — no, I went to …I forgot where I went”[laughs] I went up north to get it done because they were supposed to be really good and the surgery was terrible.”
Well, it’s unpredictable, I always tell my patients, no matter who does the surgery, it’s not dependable. It’s not predictable.
“No, it wasn’t.”
Same surgeon, same hands, same technique we can’t predict.
“Right, no.”
So radiofrequency we really have no side effects to it and patients do well.
“No side effects — I drove myself home after the surgery and just you know, started walking again without pain.”
Well excellent. Well, thank you for the testimonial and a lot of people ask what to expect, so you’re a perfect example, you’re two months out now, you’re 2 radiofrequencies in and the scar’s not ours, the scars were you came in with, but look at that, she’s moving good, she’s recovering well and she’s back to life again.
“Yes, and do the physical therapy, it helps.”
Physical therapy is very important afterwards to break up the scar tissue especially if you have previous surgery.
So, awesome, well thanks for your information, I really appreciate it.
“Thank you.”
You’re welcome.
