If you've got chronic nerve pain, a new treatment may be able to eliminate the pain by literally freezing the nerves with tiny ball of ice:
More than 15 million Americans and Europeans suffer from neuralgia, in which nerves are damaged by diabetes, surgery or traumatic injury, Moore noted. Sufferers often rely on pain medications, which have side effects and may not provide enough relief. Cryoneurolysis uses a small probe that is cooled to minus 10 to minus 16 degrees Celsius, creating a freezer burn along the outer layer of the nerve. This interrupts the pain signal to the brain and blunts or eliminates the pain while allowing the damaged nerves to grow over time, explained [William Moore, M.D., medical director of radiology at Stony Brook University School of Medicine in Stony Brook, N.Y.].
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