Determining Cost of Explant of Neurmodulation Device Due to Infection

Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) is a medical device inserted beside the spine to treat nerve pain. When the device becomes infected (which happens 4 % of the time) it needs to be taken out and put back in again at a later date. So far we are unsure of how much this process costs. I am going to analyse data collected on a database of all devices taken out due to infection and calculate an average cost of taking them out, the intermediate care and putting them back in again in our hospital only. This will enable us to understand how much this process costs and if there are any methods of reducing the chance of infection in the future; we will be able to work out how much the NHS should pay for these products based on this data. This will be done in Guys and St Thomas's from a database in the chronic pain research department in patients who had their device taken out due to infection. It will take 6 months and will all be retrospective. Additional details may be collected from patients electronic records where needed. These will be collected by a member of the direct care team and pseudonymised prior to adding to the research data set.