SAIMSARA Journal

Machine Generated Science • ISSN 3054-3991

Spinal Cord Stimulation for Chronic Pain, Neuropathy, and Device Complications: Scoping Review with ☸️SAIMSARA.

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Pain Medicine

Issue 6, Volume 1, 2026

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DOI: 10.62487/saimsara8a90f9b4

Editorial note
• Last update: 2026-05-21 09:49:11
What is this paper about
Spinal cord stimulation is not simply an implant for chronic pain — it is a long-term neuromodulation pathway where benefit depends on careful selection, anatomy-aware implantation, psychosocial screening, and active device management. The full paper maps 270 references across 631 original studies to show where SCS is strongest, where complications cluster, and which patients may gain durable value rather than repeated revision or explantation.
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Abstract: To synthesize the structured evidence on spinal cord stimulators, emphasizing study characteristics, central clinical findings, major indications, procedural and device-related complications, predictors of outcome, and practical implications for clinical use and future research. The review uses 270 references and builds its evidence map from 631 original studies with 54813756 total participants/sample observations (topic-deduplicated ΣN). Across this scoping review, spinal cord stimulation emerges as a clinically established but durability-limited neuromodulation therapy whose value depends as much on patient selection and longitudinal device management as on implantation itself. The most recurrent signal is a dual one: meaningful pain relief in refractory neuropathic and spine-related conditions alongside substantial reintervention burden, exemplified by a 23.2% re-intervention rate in a large Australian cohort and a 30% explantation rate in a percutaneous-device series. Structured psychosocial screening, anatomy-aware planning, and infection-prevention bundles were repeatedly associated with better trajectories and support integrating SCS into multidisciplinary pathways rather than treating it as a standalone procedure. Future research should prioritize pragmatic comparative trials and externally validated risk-prediction models for explantation, neurological injury, and loss of efficacy to clarify which patients and which stimulation paradigms deliver durable benefit.

Keywords: Spinal cord stimulation; Neuromodulation; Chronic pain; Neuropathic pain; Complex regional pain; SCS implantation; Lead migration; Epidural stimulation; Device complications; Percutaneous leads

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