Lumbar spinal stenosis patients experienced an 85 percent decrease in opioid use five years postoperatively when treated with Vertiflex’s Superion Indirect Decompression System, according to a study in the Journal of Pain Research.
Here are three things to know:
1. Of the 190 LSS patients who received the Superion device, 94 were using opioids postoperatively.
2. Opioid-medication prevalence decreased from 25.2 percent at 12 months postoperatively to 13.3 percent at 24 months postoperatively and then to 7.5 percent at 60 months postoperatively.
3. In 2016, an 63,632 Americans died from drug overdoses. Of those deaths, 66 percent involved an opioid, according to the CDC. More than 130 people die each day from opioid-related drug overdoses, according to HHS, and nearly 80 percent of heroin users report misusing prescription opioids before using heroin.