I need opinions from the medical Dopers…doctors, nurses, EMTs, whatever. My partner supervenusfreak suffers from severe neuropathy pain on a regular basis. It’s so bad there are nights he can’t even sleep because of it. Given that I’ve found myself with considerable time on my hands the last couple of months, I’ve been watching more television, and began to notice an ad for a semi-local neuropathy clinic, DTS of PA (warning: autoplay music!* Turn your sound down!). They claim to have an amazingly effective therapy for neuropathic pain that’s so new that most doctors haven’t heard of it yet. It would be great if it were legit, but the ads and the website and the claims (and the fact that they also appear to do chiropracty (although I can’t tell which kind)) warn me off. On the other hand, Medicare covers the therapy (if you can believe them), and it seems like Medicare would have to make sure something’s medically legit before they’ll pay for it, right?
Any medical Doper opinions on that clinic? Thanks!
*Although it’s Brubeck’s “Take Five”, which forgives a lot of things…
None of those techniques sound particularly revolutionary. Minus the nerve block injections, sounds like what would happen if a physiotherapist was treating you for a neuropathy. How effective it would be obviously depends on the source and severity of SVF’s condition.
Looking at their website as a whole, it sounds to me like this particular place is a chiropractor-based office that is trying to draw people in by downplaying the fact that they are chiropractors. I find it rather sketchy that they don’t have any info about who their doctors are or their training/qualifications on the site. It is relevant and important to know if the people treating these kinds of conditions are chiropractors vs. general practice docs (i.e., docs who didn’t complete a residency, who nowadays often - not always but often - end up practicing on the fringe of conventional medicine due to lack of options in this era where being board eligible/certified is necessary for many physician jobs) vs. specialists in chronic pain/neuropathy like a neurologist or physiatrist. I think they’re trying to hide something by not giving out that info.
If you have a good relationship with his primary care physician then I’d try asking his PCP if he has heard anything good or bad about this place, but my inclination is that it wouldn’t be worth your time to go there unless you are at the point where you’ve tried everything conventional medicine has to offer and want to try alternative medicine as a last resort. If you haven’t already gotten a specialist opinion from a neurologist or physiatrist then of course I’d go down that road before this one.
If his neuropathy is that bad, he should be under the care of a primary doctor already. But if this new place is covered by Medicare or his health insurance (and you should be able to find that out before he goes for a visit and not be out anything but a copay), what’s the harm in trying it? Yeah, it’s probably woo (just like any other site that claims to have techniques that are so advanced medical science hasn’t picked them up yet–yeah right). But, if it’s woo that insurance will pay for, I don’t really see a downside.
