Burning, tingling, or shooting pain from nerves that have been damaged or are misfiring. When medication isn't enough, neuromodulation can quiet the signal.
Neuropathic pain comes from damage to, or dysfunction of, the nerves rather than from ongoing tissue injury. It is typically burning, tingling, electric, or shooting, often with numbness in the same area, and it tends to be continuous and resistant to ordinary painkillers. Common forms include painful diabetic neuropathy, pain after a nerve injury or surgery, persistent radicular ("pinched-nerve" or sciatica-type) pain, and pain from entrapment or scarring of a peripheral nerve.
First-line treatment is medical, nerve-pain medications such as gabapentin or pregabalin, certain antidepressants, and topical agents, along with treating any underlying condition (for example, optimizing diabetes). When focal or regional neuropathic pain remains severe and disabling despite this, neuromodulation becomes an option, and it is one of the few approaches that works well for nerve-driven pain.