(COLUMBUS, Ohio) June 2014 – Imagine having to undergo hours of treatment every day, just to help your body process the foods you’ve eaten. That’s a painful reality for some children, like 16-year old Heather Rayser of northern California. For the last nine years, Heather has had to use saline and a mixture of medicines fed through a permanent tube in her abdomen, to flush out her digestive system. It is a process that takes hours every day and is often very painful. “I really can’t go anywhere or do much because my treatments take so long,” said Heather.
But thanks to an innovative procedure, doctors at Nationwide Children’s Hospital are offering Heather new hope. For the first time, Dr. Steven Teich is implanting a small device in the lower back of pediatric patients, which stimulates the sacral nerve and allows the body to function more normally. “Our success rate so far has been about 90 percent,” said Dr. Teich. “For many patients, it’s making a tremendous difference and allowing them to be like everybody else,” he said.
