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3 Medical Breakthroughs Helping Older Adults Manage Back Pain
Implantable “pacemakers” for spinal pain and nerve-blocking pills that aid recovery are revolutionizing the way we manage pain
3-minute read
Taylor Callery
Lynnette Bashein has endured severe lower-back pain for more than 20 years, racking up a list of treatments that didn’t help much, including surgeries, radiofrequency ablation and a custom-made back brace she wore for eight months. She has also endured physical therapy, pain medications, spine injections and two spinal cord stimulators — one of which delivered shocks at unexpected moments.
“I’d be walking through Walmart and it would just drop me to my knees,” says Bashein, 59, of Fort Worth, Texas, who works as a referral coordinator for a medical group. “I turned it off and had it removed.” (The other stimulator was taken out because of a skin infection.)
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At times, she used a walker or a cane. “My pain stayed between an eight and a nine,” she says.
Her pain management doctor and surgeon suggested Bashein consider a new kind of spinal cord stimulator with a “smart” feature. Like conventional stimulators for chronic back, arm and leg pain, it uses mild electric pulses to interrupt pain messages before they reach the brain. The new, smart trick: This stimulator constantly monitors bioelectric signals from the spinal cord, adjusting the electrical stimulation it delivers in response.
“This is kind of the pacemaker for the back and for the nerves,” says Dr. Melissa Z. Murphy, an interventional pain specialist who treats Bashein at North Texas Orthopedics and Spine Center in Dallas–Fort Worth. “When our patients exercise, cough and laugh, they don’t have to reach for their remote to turn down the stimulation anymore, because the system does it automatically.”
In traditional devices, certain movements or positions can alter stimulation intensity, often requiring manual adjustment: In one study of traditional stimulators, 58 percent of respondents reported overstimulation and 46 percent reported not enough stimulation as they moved around during the day.
Stimulators with this new smart feature from two device manufacturers received FDA approval in 2022 and 2024. In June 2024, Bashein tried out Medtronic’s Inceptiv spinal cord stimulator for a trial period and felt better immediately. (Saluda Medical’s Evoke is another, similar device.) She had a permanent device — about the size of an Oreo cookie — implanted. The stimulator is then attached to electric leads that are implanted in the spine, close to nerves.
“My pain, if I have it, is between a one and a two,” Bashein says. Since then, she has switched it off only for medical tests like magnetic resonance imaging scans.
Bashein changed jobs in 2025 because she was now able to drive to worksites without discomfort. She works out at the gym, goes bowling and frequently gets together with friends to dance to ’80s music at a Fort Worth club.
“There’s so many fun things that I can do now,” she says.
More advances in pain relief
Breakthrough: Nonopioid pain pill
A first-of-its-class, opioid-free pain pill called Journavx, FDA-approved in 2025, got high ratings for pain control from 90 out of 99 people who used it after reconstructive and aesthetic procedures in a 2025 study from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. The study was presented at a meeting of the American Academy of Pain Medicine.
The drug is intended for moderate to severe short-term pain, such as the kind that occurs after surgery. It works by blocking pain signals in nerves before they reach the brain.
Breakthrough: VR for chronic pain
RelieVRx is a virtual reality system for chronic lower-back pain relief, the first of its kind authorized by the FDA for this condition. It’s available to eligible patients through Veterans Administration providers across the U.S. In a study, those who used it said the intensity of their back pain dropped by an average of two points on a zero-to-10 pain scale.
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