A new Israeli technology used at Rambam Hospital helped free a man from dependence on painkillers

Doctors at Haifa's Rambam Health Care Campus have achieved a significant breakthrough in treating opioid addiction, successfully using an experimental noninvasive brain technology to free an Israeli man from dependence in just 20 minutes. The patient, identified as H., a 40-year-old father, had been reliant on painkillers for a neck injury sustained years prior, escalating to approximately 130 pills daily.

Dr. Amir Minerbi, director of the Pain Medicine Institute at Rambam, explained that H. was no longer suffering from pain but required the substance to function. The innovative treatment involved specialists intervening in the electrical activity of the nucleus accumbens, a brain region crucial for satisfaction and reward. This technique, based on technology from the Israeli firm Insightec, is similar to treatments used for essential tremor and Parkinson's disease, employing MRI-controlled neuromodulation without tissue damage.

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Over time the pain lessened, but he could not break free from the dependence on the pills and the doses kept increasing, until they reached a peak of about 130 pills a day. H. was no longer suffering from pain. He simply needed that substance in his blood so he would be calm and able to function.

Dr. Lior Lev-Tov, who led the study, noted the technology's ability to precisely target and influence brain activity. "Already during the treatment itself we identified a decrease in the patient's craving for the drug," he stated. Subsequent tests confirmed the absence of opioids and other substances, with the patient reporting zero craving. Remarkably, his desire for cigarettes dropped drastically, and he experienced no urge for alcohol. This rapid and effective treatment offers a potential revolution in managing opioid addiction, a global epidemic responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths annually, particularly in the United States.

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The new technology allows us to intervene in the brain's electrical activity in a targeted way, and thereby influence focused control areas in brain activity, depending on the disease being treated. Already during the treatment itself we identified a decrease in the patient's craving for the drug. Tests carried out a week later produced negative results for opioids and other substances. The patient himself reported a craving score of zero out of 10 for using the drug, and even another side effect, a drastic drop in the desire for cigarettes, from three packs a day to just a few cigarettes, and with no urge to use alcohol. In other words, in a treatment that lasted about 20 minutes net, our patient was completely freed from an extreme dependence that had accompanied him every day for years. This is nothing less than a medical and therapeutic revolution.