12 | June 16, 2016 | Johns Creek Herald | NorthFulton.com
COMMUNITY
PUTTING BIG CHILL ON CHRONIC PAIN:
Emory Johns Creek pionee Clinical trials show cryoablation successfully treats pain By HATCHER HURD hatcher@appenmediagroup.com JOHNS CREEK, Ga. – Clinical trials by an Emory Johns Creek radiologist have astounding results in eliminating pain at the source – the nerve signal itself. Dr. J. David Prologo is the radiologist who is blazing the trial in what is called cryoablation interventional radiology. Using X-rays to guide a needle-like probe, Prologo can zap nerve endings with a freezing material that will cause the nerve endings to reduce pain signals if not completely at least to more than tolerable levels. Prologo is the director of Interventional Radiology Services at EJCH. He has used the procedure to treat phantom limb pain in amputees and has also had success treating pain in trauma patients and cancer patients – and eliminating the need for risky opioid painkillers. “What we do is a procedure with the image guidance, so that we can reach places in the body no one else can reach,” Prologo said. “Now we are applying the procedure to the pain sources [directly].” The procedure was first applied to phantom limb pain – PLP – for amputees. When a limb is amputated, it necessitates the severing of nerve endings as well and these can be damaged so that these nerve endings can keep firing off pain signals that are perceived as coming from the missing limb. A patient suffering from chronic pelvic pain read about the trials and asked Prologo to try the procedure on her. She had spent more than two years of chronic pudendal neuralgia and she wanted to try a new therapy. Prologo said he was reluctant at first, but after consulting with other radiologists agreed to try although it had never been done before. “The pudendal nerve is hypersensitive but it had always been impossible to get to it. With the cryoablation probe we thought we could do that. And we were successful,” Prologo said. “We freeze the pain source. Patients who could only take opioids before are now free of those with cryoablation,” he said. “Patients with years of pelvic pain are cured with one treatment.” Prologo said he was just in the right place at the right time to begin studying cryoablation and the remediation of pain.
Emory Johns Creek Hospital Radiologist J. Officer Dr. Dapo Odetoyinbo without invasive
We freeze the pain source. Patients who could only take opioids before are now free of those with cryoablation.” DR. J. DAVID PROLOGO Emory Johns Creek radiologist “It really was the luckiest thing to happen to me in my career to be the one to get into this,” he said. The doctor first began trials to treat painful cancer lesions that so far been successful in lessening or eliminating the