Spinal cord stimulation is an effective treatment modality for patients with numerous pain conditions. Although proven to be highly successful, device implantation does come with some inherent risks. One of the most challenging complications is perioperative infection. For most patients, a simple trial of oral antibiotics and in-office drainage of any superficial infectious material may be sufficient. Deeper infections with wound dehiscence necessitate device removal and intravenous antibiotic therapy. The question remains, if the device was previously providing pain relief for the patient, when is the appropriate time to reimplant the device after the infection has cleared? We describe the case of explantation of an infected device and successful reimplantation after 1 year.
Keywords: infection; interventional pain medicine; spinal cord stimulator.
The Author(s). This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, permitting unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction so long as the original work is properly cited. ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ).