What is calmare

Calmare Pain Therapy allows up to five pain areas in the same person to be treated simultaneously. TENS units use high energy electrical impulses to block pain signals or distract the brain but when discontinued provide no lasting pain relief.

Is Calmare Pain Therapy Safe? What Is The Treatment Protocol? Book Your Appointment. Schedule Appointment Call us at or click the button to schedule your appointment!

He and colleagues reported that scrambler therapy was effective at reducing pain symptoms in patients with severe, drug-resistant pain from terminal cancer. The Calmare scrambler therapy device has since received FDA clearance in the United States for use in patients experiencing pain from cancer and chemotherapy, pain as a result of chronic diseases such as diabetes, multiple sclerosis and arthritis, back and neck pain, failed back surgery syndrome, and phantom limb pain among others.

HemOnc Today asked Charles L. Loprinzi, MD, Regis professor of breast cancer research at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, about the safety and efficacy of scrambler therapy, as well as his ongoing research efforts. Question: Can you describe scrambler therapy and how it came about? Answer: Scrambler therapy is an electro-cutaneous treatment. Although people may think of it as being similar to transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation TENS therapy, scrambler therapy is felt to work through a different mechanism.

TENS is thought to work through the gateway theory of pain relief, whereby normal touch sensations blocks pain sensations. Scrambler therapy, on the other hand, is proposed to provide normal-self, non-pain electrical information via nerves that have been transmitting chronic pain information.

Through a process termed plasticity, this is able to retrain the brain so that it does not ascribe pain to the chronic pain area. Scrambler therapy consists of a machine, which looks somewhat like an electrocardiogram machine. Leads are placed on patients, around the areas of chronic pain.

Scrambled electrical signals are then sent to the brain that perceives them as normal, non-pain signals. Via this process, the brain is retrained to think that there really is not pain in the area that is being treated. Q: How and when did you become involved with this treatment approach?

A: I was introduced to scrambler therapy in by Thomas J. Smith, MD, now at Johns Hopkins University, who had heard about scrambler therapy and decided to try it in patients with chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy CIPN. He subsequently published a pilot trial that supported that scrambler therapy was an effective approach for treating established CIPN.

After some internal debate as to whether I should look further into this treatment approach, which sounded quite strange to me, I did agree to study it. Having now treated more than patients at Mayo, we published a paper on the use of this treatment for chemotherapy neuropathy, which concurred with Dr.

Q: What other published data support the value of scrambler therapy? A: I am aware of 19 published reports regarding scrambler therapy, involving more than patients. Seventeen of these are published manuscripts, whereas two are only published as meeting abstracts.

These reports include clinical practice summaries, prospective non-randomized clinical trials and randomized controlled trials, including two trials that sought to double blind patients and investigators.

The authors of 18 of the 19 reports concluded that scrambler therapy was a beneficial treatment approach, whereas one report — published only as a meeting abstract and only involving 14 patients — concluded that this was not an effective treatment.

Of note, one relatively large randomized trial, with a non-blinded control arm consisting of optimizing medical management of pain, reported substantially more benefit from scrambler therapy than was observed in the control arm. Additionally, a relatively small placebo-controlled, patient-blinded trial reported a statistically significantly beneficial effect for scrambler therapy in a small number of patients with chronic low back pain. Thus, there are substantial data that support the value of scrambler therapy.

Having said this, I readily admit that scrambler therapy has not yet been clearly proven to be beneficial. Ideally, additional randomized clinical trials will be reported to provide for more substantial clinical data regarding the true value of scrambler therapy. Smith is conducting one trial at Johns Hopkins and we, at Mayo, are gearing up for another one.

This all takes time, energy and funds. Q: Can you briefly discuss the findings from the clinical study you reported regarding the use of scrambler therapy in patients with established CIPN?

What are the possible side effects or negative impacts from having scrambler therapy? I love that question because there are no reported side effects.

It is also a painless therapy, but for people with severe sensitivity to touch, the first treatments can elicit some discomfort, obviously, when our leads are initially placed. But this is usually alleviated as the therapy progresses.

How will this affect my Calmare treatments? Physician-prescribed opioids are not a problem when using scrambler therapy, however, anticonvulsants and antidepressants appear to dull the pain center, which can decrease the overall response to Calmare.

I can go into greater detail on this subject with each patient. Who or what kind of medical condition is not suited for this treatment contraindications? Each patient and medical history is unique, but people with these medical issues are generally not suited to undergo Calmare:. Under medically-supervised care, neurolytic pain control treatment should be carefully reduced to 0 four weeks before therapy begins. Some of our patients have been successful in winning reimbursement after treatment from their medical insurance companies.

Keep in mind, most of their claims were originally denied, but when they were appealed, some patients earned some reimbursement. Speaking specifically to my practice alone and referring to CRPS patient cases, we have seen a success rate of 75 to 80 percent. Michael Cooney is one of 10 certified providers of Calmare scrambler therapy in the U. To learn more, visit www.