MDNews - Minnesota

COVER FEATURE PHOTOTHERAPY AN AS A NONINVASIVE OPTION FOR PAIN RELIEF SENTINEL MEDICAL ASSOCIATES, LASER CENTER By Marian Deegan ESTIMATED 80% OF Americans will experience back pain during their lifetimes. Lower back pain has been cited as the most frequent pain-related reason to visit a physician, the third most frequent reason for a surgical procedure and the fifth most common cause for hospitalization. Physicians are faced with the prospect of guiding patients through an array of treatment approaches, from conservative therapy to surgical intervention, often without definitive guidance clarifying the relative efficacy of surgical versus nonsurgical modalities. In the Twin Cities, spine neurosurgeon Charles V. Burton, M.D., has more than 40 years of experience treating neck, back, joint and peripheral extremity pain with both surgical and nonsurgical approaches. Dr. Burton invited MD News Twin Cities to the Sentinel Laser Center in Saint Paul, MN, to discuss his perspective on patient-oriented pain care and his commitment to the development of innovative, noninvasive, low-cost light therapies to treat spine and major joint pain. "Pain is the most common complaint for which multilevel spine surgery and fusion are done," Dr. Burton explains. "In 2007, spinal fusion surgeries accounted for almost $9 billion in U.S. health care revenue, yet we don't have definitive documentation that either multilevel spine or fusion surgery is an effective pain treatment. Medical evidence indicates that drugs and injection treatments for back pain frequently have poor outcomes and are not always cost effective. I believe that spine care in America has seen a progressively misplaced confidence in the benefit of surgical intervention. Because of this, I was attracted to investigate noninvasive methods that were capable of enhancing the body's own healing processes." Patient-reported experiences of treatment success using low-level light therapy, or phototherapy, prompted Dr. Burton to investigate low-intensity light therapy (LILT) to treat pain. 6 | Twin Cities MD NEWS n MDNEWS.COM PHOTOS © DAVID GINSBERG

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