CALIFORNIA, USA — Research shows 30 million Americans suffer from chronic back pain. For one in six, it's vertebrogenic pain, which is a specific lower back pain due to vertebral endplate damage.
Northern California Spine and Rehabilitation Associates Physician Dr. Sameer Sharma said pain could feel present as issues bending forward, touching your toes or tying your shoes. He also says it typically doesn't improve with therapy.
Vacaville firefighter and paramedic, Ken Chicoine, knew the pain very well. In July 2022, he jumped out of an ambulance to rescue a patient and found himself with a back injury. He already dealt with sciatic pain in the past.
"He was looking at me and I was looking at him like... who's going to help who?" Chicoine said.
It led to months of pain and a break in his decade-long career — on top of time away from coaching his children's sports teams and doing the things he loved.
"I physically couldn't do normal jobs around the house. I couldn't bend over, put away dishes or do laundry. Sounds like a great excuse as a husband, you know walking around the house, but it was the facts and it was reality," he said.
Chicoine tried medicine, chiropractors and acupuncture but nothing worked. He says searching around online is what led to finding a solution.
"They kind of told me 'Hey, there's nothing left for you and it's just going to take time' and surely I was proactive in the process and thought to myself there's got to be something more," Chicoine said.
He found Sharma who led him to the Intracept Procedure. It's a minimally invasive procedure that treats inflammation due to a loss of disc height.
"It takes me about less than an hour to do a one-centimeter incision. There's no implant and the patients go home that day," Sharma said. "This procedure has been around for years. There's a lot of research behind it. It's been around for 30 years but it's a relatively novel procedure that physicians are going into the market currently. There may be some primary care physicians that may not be aware of it."
The procedure cured Chicoine's back pain. Today, he's back to doing all the activities he loves.
"I knew when I left the procedure I was able to cough, I was able to sneeze and those are two things that would put me down to my knees," Chicoine said. "I'm skiing, I'm playing golf again, I'm doing everything that I was doing prior and I feel better than I did even prior to the injury."
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