WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) – A ground-breaking procedure is gaining new attention across the country after NBC’s Carson Daly shared his experience with the Intracept procedure. It’s a treatment Wichita Ascension Via Christi has offered for years.
One surgery recipient was Ken Koehler, who suffered from pain that lasted years.
“The pain at the base of my back was there all the time. Even with shots, it would maybe get a little better, but those were not lasting very long,” Koehler said. “I wanted to get back to being able to do, to play golf, to bicycle, to walk, to get out of bed without a lot of back pain.”
After many epidurals, Koehler went for the procedure last June. The procedure targets specific nerves in the vertebra.
“We do that through using an X-ray, X-ray guides. We can place a needle into the bone and through that needle, we place a probe, and that’s how we cauterize that nerve,” said Dr. Brian Goentzel, anesthesiologist specializing in interventional pain management with Ascension Via Christi. “It’s like getting updates or alerts on your cell phone. What we do is we shut off that alert, so we don’t get them anymore. Same thing we ablate that basivertebral nerve, and we shut off that pain signal to get to your brain.”
Ascension Via Christi has been offering the procedure for two years.
“We have long-term studies that show that if we can, you know, treat your pain, there’s a really good chance that that pain will never return,” said Goentzel.
Koehler was blown away by the success.
“I did not expect to get the amount of relief that I did. You know, I thought, hey, we would kill 50% of the pain, I would be excited. But my thought is it’s probably closer to 90% of the pain went away,” Koehler added.
The procedure allowed him to get back to what he loves.
“I can bend down and get on the floor with my granddaughter and get back up without being in pain,” Koehler said.
In two years, Ascension Via Christi says it has been able to perform the Intracept procedure on nearly 100 people.