The next era of personalized pain management: WaveWriter Alpha™ Spinal Cord Stimulator System

More than 50 million people in the U.S. suffer from chronic pain, defined as continuous pain that lasts more than six months. Of these, 19.6 million adults experience high-impact chronic pain that interferes with their daily lives.[1] No two people feel pain in the same way and many of those suffering seek a safe and personalized way to find relief without prescription medications such as opioids.

The WaveWriter Alpha™ Spinal Cord Stimulator System is the latest advancement from Boston Scientific in chronic pain therapy, and is built on years of research and development to help people living with chronic pain find relief. One option for patients seeking relief from chronic pain is spinal cord stimulation (SCS). This therapy is designed to provide pain relief by sending mild electric pulses to the spinal cord to interrupt pain signals traveling to the brain.

SCS therapy does not eliminate the source of pain, but it changes the way the brain perceives it. And because people experience pain differently, multiple approaches to therapy are available to meet individual patient needs and preferences. Some patients find the greatest pain relief with a sensation (such as light tingling) called paresthesia, while others find relief with stimulation designed to mask pain without that sensation (paresthesia-free). Traditional paresthesia-free therapy can take several days—or longer—to provide pain relief.

With the launch of the WaveWriter Alpha, Boston Scientific introduced a new therapy called Fast-Acting Sub-perception Therapy (FAST™).[2] FAST is designed to allow patients to experience profound paresthesia-free pain relief in just minutes, delivering immediate and significant results to patients before they leave the clinic.

And because WaveWriter Alpha offers multiple therapy options, physicians have the ability and flexibility to respond to the needs and preferences of more patients who suffer from chronic pain.

Recently, WaveWriter Alpha was named the Best Overall Medical Device Solution by the MedTech Breakthrough Awards, which highlight innovative products that address a true need and solve a complex or critical problem.

Boston Scientific is focused on advancing therapy options for people suffering from chronic pain. For more information on personalized pain therapies, please visit www.pain.com.

Safety information for the WaveWriter Alpha product portfolio, is available here.