Bilateral cortical stimulation for deafferentation pain after spinal cord injury. Case report

The relief of intractable pain after spinal cord injury (SCI) is very difficult to obtain, even with dorsal root entry zone lesioning, spinal cord stimulation, and thalamic stimulation. Using bilateral motor cortex stimulation (MCS) the authors successfully treated a woman who experienced deafferentation pain 4 years after sustaining an SCI. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first report of bilateral MCS for pain relief after SCI. The success they achieved using this method indicates that MCS could be a new treatment option for deafferentation pain following SCI.