No abstract

RESULTS BACKGROUNDHistorically, Spinal Cord Stimulation (SCS) has relied on the understanding that to achieve pain relief, dorsal column stimulation induced paresthesia has to be generated around the area of pain in order to successfully treat pain. However, recent studies have suggested that effective pain relief may be obtained by employing stimulation without paresthesia. Results from a recently published randomized controlled trial (Thomson S., et al., Neuromodulation 2017) provided Level 1 evidence that equivalent pain relief from 1 kHz to 10 kHz with appropriate neural dosing was acquired in a cohort of 20 subjects. Furthermore, 1 kHz required significantly less charge than higher frequencies. The Boston Scientific sponsored WHISPER study is a multi-center, randomized, controlled, crossover, open label study designed to demonstrate that sub-perception at ≤1.2 kHz is safe and effective.