It was followed by a catheter tipped with a heating element. With the catheter positioned inside the disc, resting against its outer edge, they switched on the heat. For the next 16 minutes, the temperature of the heating element climbed steadily to 194 degrees. Tenn. The goal was to ease, even eliminate, the low back pain that started when Winter felt that tear. She and her doctors hoped the heat would toughen and shrink the disc, theoretically eliminating cracks and fissures in its tough cartilage rings, decreasing instability and inflammation, maybe even destroying the nerves involved in propagating the pain.
IDET treatment takes about an hour, and patients can be taken home after it.
It was developed in 1997 and provides an option for patients who aren't quite ready for debilitating surgery. IDET is just one of the latest efforts to ease chronic low back pain, a problem that will strike about 80 percent of American adults with incapacitating results at least once. For many, relief is found with anti-inflammatory drugs, physical therapy, heat or other nonsurgical approaches. But pain will become a chronic problem for about 10 percent of patients. For them, surgery to fuse vertebrae was traditionally the main option if less invasive techniques failed.