Doctors at Rambam Hospital in Haifa say they have carried out a new treatment that helped a man in his 40s end a severe painkiller addiction in about 20 minutes. The patient, identified only as H., is a family man from northern Israel who was injured in the neck several years ago and later became dependent on pain medication. At its peak, he was taking about 130 pills a day, according to Dr. Amir Minerbi, head of Rambam’s pain medicine institute.
Minerbi said the man no longer had pain, but was dependent on the substance to stay calm and function. The treatment was made possible by a unique Israeli technology from the company Insightec, as part of an international study being conducted at a small number of medical centers in the United States and now at Rambam.
The procedure involved changing the electrical activity in the patient’s nucleus accumbens, a brain region central to reward, pleasure and satisfaction. Unlike treatments for tremor or Parkinsonian tremor that use MRI guidance and are based on a similar platform, this new method uses noninvasive neuromodulation without heating or burning tissue, allowing targeted stimulation or suppression of activity in the same area.
Dr. Lior Lev Tov, head of the functional neurosurgery unit at Rambam, said the team saw an immediate drop in the patient’s craving. Tests a week later were negative for opioids and other substances, and the patient reported zero out of ten desire to use the drug. He also said his urge to smoke fell sharply, from three packs a day to only a few cigarettes, with no desire for alcohol. Lev Tov called the 20-minute treatment “nothing less than a medical and therapeutic revolution.”
