Chicago Surgeon Rewrites Chronic Pain Management

Healthcare professional uses tablet with medical holograms — Photo: metamorworks / Shutterstock

A child who once could not walk because of nerve pain got her life back after doctors placed a small stimulator against her spinal cord.

Quick Take

Dr. Jeffrey Raskin, a pediatric neurosurgeon at Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, uses spinal cord stimulation to treat kids with severe chronic pain.
A published case report co-authored by Raskin shows the device relieved complex regional pain syndrome in a young patient.
Medical research shows neuromodulation cuts pain and medication use in kids with tough-to-treat nerve conditions.
Doctors still treat these devices as a later option, used after therapy and medicine fail to help.

A Chicago Surgeon Tackles Pain That Won’t Quit

Dr. Jeffrey Raskin directs the Functional Neurosurgery Program at Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. He also teaches at Northwestern University’s medical school. His focus is a tricky problem: children whose chronic pain does not respond to normal treatment. For these kids, standard fixes like physical therapy or pills often fall short, leaving families searching for another answer.

One of those families found Raskin after their daughter Isabella developed severe nerve pain from a spinal compression fracture. Hospital records describe how Raskin quickly identified the cause and recommended a spinal cord stimulator, a small implanted device that changes how the body sends pain signals to the brain. The surgery marked one of the first of its kind performed at the hospital for a child.

Isabella’s case is not a one-off. A 2020 case report in the journal Pain Practice, co-written by Raskin, documented a similar success. Doctors treated a young patient with complex regional pain syndrome, a condition marked by burning, constant nerve pain, using spinal cord stimulation. The authors reported the treatment worked and pushed the case forward to open debate about using this technology earlier in children’s care.

What the Broader Medical Record Shows

Raskin’s work fits into a growing body of pediatric neurosurgery research. A separate study following a series of young patients found that spinal cord stimulation lowered pain scores and cut down on medication use across several neuropathic pain syndromes in children. Researchers called the approach useful for a range of hard-to-treat conditions once other options had been tried and failed.

A wider systematic review backs this up. Researchers looked at eleven studies covering nineteen children who had not responded to standard pain management. Nearly all of them, whether they had complex regional pain syndrome or another nerve condition, reported real pain relief and got back function they had lost. That kind of consistency across separate small studies gives doctors confidence the approach works, even without one giant clinical trial to prove it at scale.

Raskin also holds a leadership post with the North American Neuromodulation Society, a professional group focused on advancing stimulation-based treatments. His academic output includes broader reviews on neurosurgical options for chronic and end-of-life pain in children, co-authored with colleagues at Lurie Children’s Hospital. That body of work treats devices like spinal cord stimulators as one tool among several, not a first stop for every child in pain.

Where This Fits in Pediatric Pain Care

Global health guidance still puts physical, psychological, and drug-based treatments first for children with chronic pain. Neuromodulation enters the picture mainly when those options run out. Reviews of the neurosurgical literature note that while these devices appear safe, doctors cannot yet call the evidence overwhelming because study groups remain small, often just seven to fifteen patients per report.

That caution makes sense. Nobody wants surgeons rushing to implant hardware in growing children based on thin data. But the pattern across multiple independent papers, from Raskin’s own case work to broader systematic reviews, points the same direction: for kids who have run out of options, a spinal stimulator can restore function conventional treatment could not touch. For parents watching a child suffer with no relief in sight, that track record matters more than statistical perfection.