Rambam Medical Center in Haifa says it helped a man in his 40s stop relying on about 130 painkiller pills a day in just 20 minutes, using a unique Israeli technology from InSightec as part of an international study now running at a small number of medical centers in the United States and at Rambam.
The patient, identified as H., is a father and northern Israel resident who injured his neck several years ago. He began taking painkillers for the injury and eventually became addicted. Dr. Amir Minervi, head of Rambam’s Pain Medicine Institute, said the pain later eased, but H. could not break free from the medication and the doses kept rising until they reached roughly 130 pills daily.
The treatment targeted electrical activity in the nucleus accumbens, a brain region central to reward, pleasure and motivation. Dr. Lior Lev-Tabb, head of Rambam’s functional neurosurgery unit, said the new noninvasive neuromodulation technology, guided by MRI and without heating or burning tissue, allowed doctors to influence specific brain circuits tied to addiction. He said cravings dropped during the procedure, and tests a week later were negative for opioids and other substances. H. reported a craving score of zero out of ten and also a sharp drop in cigarette use, from three packs a day to only a few cigarettes, with no urge to drink alcohol.
Doctors said the patient has remained free of the drug since treatment and told them he had “got his life back.” They described the result as a medical breakthrough. Minervi said opioid addiction is a global epidemic, with hundreds of thousands of deaths in the United States and estimated annual damage of about $60 billion. In Israel, he said, opioid use, which had recently been among the fastest rising in the world, is now declining.
The broader trial is taking place in three U.S. centers and has so far shown strong results in maintaining opioid recovery, including among some heroin users. Rambam researchers say the same platform could eventually be used for PTSD, OCD, eating disorders, other addictions, severe depression, chronic pain, attention disorders, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
