When Retiree Eileen Finegan came to Dr. David Dombrowski's office at the Washington Pain Center 10 years ago, she was at the end of her rope.
Suffering from nerve damage after back surgery, she was in chronic pain.
“I was just literally not able to do anything productive because the pain level was so high,” says Finegan says. After one surgery, she was reluctant to undergo another back surgery that would require taking high-dose pain medicine afterward.
Dombrowski works with people suffering from acute or chronic long-term pain and specializes in opiate-free treatments to help patients manage their discomfort.
He became certified in addiction medicine after his patients started asking him for powerful prescription painkillers to treat their pain.
“I realized that these people are physically dependent on these medications” says Dombrowski," he says.“I want to be part of the solution where we can help them get off these medications.”
What he came up with were minimally invasive procedures, including treatments that use state-of-the-art radio frequency technology and spinal cord stimulation. Dombrowski says these opiate-free treatments are a part of his overall patient-care philosophy, adding “that’s the whole job of medicine, is to really make people better.”
“If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is,” says Dombrowski, a certified physician and anesthesiologist. “These great ideas of, ‘well here’s a med, you’ll be fine, I’ll see you in 30 days,’ that’s not how we treat patients.”
Eileen Finegan chose a spinal cord stimulator to deal with her chronic pain that was surgically implanted under local anesthesia at Dombrowski’s office.
This “pacemaker for pain” sits at the base of her spine, sending electrical signals through the spinal cord and interrupting pain signals that would ordinarily reach her brain.
For Eileen, the rechargeable cell-phone sized device had made a world of difference.
“All the sudden, I was able to walk without pain,” says Eileen, who has lived with the device for nearly a decade. “I felt this vibration sensation in here, like you’re on the back of the bus, you’re over the motor, but it’s inside, it’s not uncomfortable.”
In 2015, 92 million Americans reported using prescription opioids to alleviate or manage pain, with 11.5 million reporting they had misused them, according to the latest data from the 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health..
After becoming addicted to opioids and heroin, business owner David Stavinoha sought treatment and seemed to be on the road to recovery.
“Unfortunately I relapsed, and I wanted to look at what was the next step?” says Stavinoha, who researched alternative treatments in the hopes of preventing another relapse.
That brought him to Dr. Dombrowski, who performed a procedure known as a Naltrexone implant. The implant, surgically inserted underneath the skin on David’s stomach, distributes medication that counteracts the effects of drugs or alcohol to block his euphoric “high.”
While the FDA-approved implant has been used by patients for more than 30 years, Dombrowski says he considers it as one part of a multimodal treatment plan for patients.
“They need rehab counseling, how to order their life again, diet, exercise, all those things are really important, says Dombrowski. “But if we can take one thing off their mind, in terms of their dependency, that’s a tremendous success, and that’s what this implant can do for these patients.”
