Will make a list of your questions and get answers this Tuesday. I know after a period of time you only need to go in yearly for checkups. The following explains the surgery. An important thing to remember is that for the tinnitus treatment it onlys uses 1/100th of the electrical pulse needed for the epilepsy treatment. Have read where this type of surgery has been done over 60,000 times.
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The device is surgically implanted under the skin on the chest. A wire is then threaded under the skin to connect the device to the vagus nerve, a large nerve that extends from the head and neck to the abdomen and commands voice (vocal cord movement) and involuntary body movements like as heart rate and food digestion.
Once the device is active, patients will undergo combined audio therapy. During therapy, patients wear headphones and listen to a series of single frequency tones, paired with stimulation, to encouraging neurons in the brain to change their connections and behavior. The 2.5-hour session will take place five days a week during the course of 4 weeks, initially in clinic and then at home.
To test the effectiveness of VNS to treat tinnitus, patients in the study will be randomly selected to take part in one of two groups:
• One group will get the VNS and tone test treatment immediately
• The other group will get the VNS, but "sham" therapy that is not expected to have a therapeutic benefit
After six weeks, both groups will receive active test treatment.
VNS is currently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in the treatment of epilepsy and depression. More than 60,000 devices have been implanted in patients with epilepsy during the past 15 years.
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