Main focus of local surgeon is to offer minimally evasive treatments for the spine, nerves
By David L. Podos
Living with chronic pain can be debilitating. In a 2021 research study, the CDC estimated that close to 21% of United States adults (more than 51 million people), experienced chronic pain. Almost 7% or 17.1 million experienced high-impact chronic pain — pain that was so severe that it restricted most daily activities.
Additionally, the economic impact from people dealing with chronic pain is significant, An estimate is that, due to reduced productivity and the associated health care costs, it costs the country between $560 billion and $635 billion annually.
New and promising innovations in the treatment of pain are giving hope to many who suffer day in and day out, giving them their lives back. Here in the Utica area patients have the opportunity to be treated by a renowned surgeon — physician Nameer R. Haider.
Haider is a graduate of King Edward Medical University, completed his surgical internship at East Carolina University School of Medicine. His residency was at Northshore University – Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New York—where he was chief resident. He completed his fellowship training in interventional pain management at the Spinal and Skeletal Pain Institute in New York. He is triple board certified in physical medicine and rehabilitation, pain medicine and interventional pain management.
Haider is the principal at Omni Pain and Precision Medicine in Utica.
“My main focus of practice is in minimally evasive surgical treatments specifically for the spine. However, we also offer orthopedic treatments and nerve treatments for various nerve and orthopedic conditions,” he said.
He also utilizes a number of innovative modalities to treat a host of medical conditions from depression, too nerve pain, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation, radio frequency and spinal cord stimulators to name just a few.
While that may sound like something out of a science fiction magazine, that is far from the truth.
“In medical practice doctors often use medications for the treatment of mental health issues. Oftentimes they work. However, they do have side effects and sometimes the medication doesn’t work. So, for example, I was looking for something that would help people with mental health problems,” he said. “Transcranial magnetic stimulation is a treatment that is non evasive, not painful, where we actually use magnetic waves to target a specific part of the brain that is sensitive to the transmission of those signals (abnormal signals when someone is depressed) or someone who has PTSD or an obsessive-compulsive disorder. We have a very high efficacy rate in our treatments with patients, and it is FDA approved.”
Medicine is evolving rapidly and alongside this evolution is the use of medical implants. Haider invented and was the first in the world to utilize the HALO procedure using surgically implanted peripheral cranial nerve stimulation for the treatment of chronic headache (killmigriane.com) and the Bio Disc procedure for the treatment of spinal disc disease.
Additionally, off-label use of medicines and or procedures for “other” conditions is becoming more common. An article from the Mayo Clinic and authored by endocrinologist Sumit Bhagra, mentions that there are risks and benefits of off-label use. However, the popularity is growing.
“There are examples of widely practiced off-label medications in every specialty of medicine and, in some cases, these have become predominate treatments for specific health conditions,” Haider said. “An example of this is aspirin. It has FDA approval for pain, fever, rheumatic diseases, heart disease and other conditions. Yet, aspirin was never studied in people with both diabetes and heart disease. Therefore, a low-dose aspirin regime for someone with Type 2 diabetes is considered a mainstream, yet off -label recommendation.”
Haider also incorporates off-label use as well.
“We have to look at what is FDA-approved. So, right now the FDA has approved the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation for depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and for smoking cessation. However, off-label use it has been studied and proven that it is effective for chronic pain and even for post COVID conditions.”
Medical devices that are implanted just under the skin have also seen an increase in the use of managing pain.
“For example, there is a new procedure called Sprint PNS (peripheral nerve stimulation), it works to treat pain coming form a specific area. So, say that you have shoulder pain or hip pain; on an out-patient basis we put a very thin wire under the skin. What happens is, that wire has micro electrodes on it made of platinum and iridium. They send an electric signal, sort of the way that a pacemaker works to control the heart, this works to control pain wherever that might be, like your shoulder or your hip,” Haider explained.