Dr. Vikki Hazelwood, CEO
SPOC Inc.

Back pain afflicts four out of five Americans at some point during their lives, according to the National Institutes of Health. It is the most common reason Americans see a doctor for pain. Physicians conduct more than one million spinal surgeries each year — with failure rates as high as 50 percent.

SPOC Inc. has developed a medical device that provides an extraordinarily precise way to diagnose and treat back pain. The first instrument of its type, the device promises to bring relief to millions of people while lowering the cost of treatment and eliminating unnecessary surgeries.

To appreciate why we’re so excited about our device, consider the challenges of diagnosing and treating chronic back pain. Unlike a muscle sprain or pull, chronic back pain never fully goes away. We often think of chronic back pain as a problem with vertebrae, discs, arthritis or nerves. Yet these account for only a small fraction of the problem. Surprisingly, 85 percent of chronic back pain is diagnosed as “nonspecific low-back pain.”

Why do physicians have trouble pinpointing the origins of “nonspecific” pain? Because most of it is caused by muscles, and muscular problems are hard to diagnose. Muscle pain does not show up on X-rays. It is invisible on MRIs and CT scans. Physicians usually look for pain by palpation — by poking and prodding back muscles. Pressing sensitive spots produces pain, but it is not the same pain produced by natural muscle contractions as the body walks, bends and twists.

More important, this type of examination often points to the wrong pain origination site. This is because our muscles function as groups of muscles. The source of pain can actually “refer” pain to other — often distant — muscles in a group of muscles. It may hurt where a doctor presses, but that location is not necessarily where the pain is coming from.

The SPOC device makes it possible to trace back pain to its source with unparalleled accuracy. Pinpointing the source allows doctors  to treat it effectively.

SPOC builds on the clinical work of two renowned pain physicians, Dr. Norman Marcus and Dr. Hans Kraus. Dr. Kraus, President John F. Kennedy’s back doctor, helped found the field of sports and rehabilitative medicine. He also developed manual techniques to evaluate muscles and treat back pain.

Dr. Marcus, Dr. Kraus’s student and a past president of the American Academy of Pain Medicine, built on his mentor’s methods. His patented Marcus Method, which pinpoints the origin of chronic pain, has made the Marcus Pain Institute one of the nation’s premier centers for back pain treatment.

Dr. Marcus’s approach requires intensive training and cumbersome equipment. SPOC overcomes these impediments by providing a compact handheld device that medical professionals can master rapidly.

The initial design was developed by a team of Stevens Institute of Technology (SIT) students – Jeckin Shah, Ryan Stellar and Dan Silva – who were in my senior design class. The original proof of concept, from whence SPOC (Stevens Proof of Concept) derives its name, proved so promising that SIT decided to launch SPOC LLC in 2005 to commercialize the concept. By early 2007, Connecticut Innovations had committed bioseed funds, which enabled us to incorporate and make significant strides toward commercial development. Since then, we have refined our initial design, completed clinical trials, which delivered very promising results, and received 510K clearance from the Food and Drug Administration.

The SPOC device locates pain trigger points by emitting a signal that causes individual muscles to contract just as they do when we move. This not only duplicates the pain caused by natural movement but also makes it possible to trace the pain from one muscle to the next and back to the source, rather than losing the pathway in groups of muscles.

An initial study recently accepted for publication demonstrates the power of SPOC’s device. Using the device, Dr. Marcus found that 76 percent of 173 patients who reported chronic back pain had muscular issues. He used the SPOC device to locate the source of the pain and was then able to deliver an appropriate treatment. The patients Dr. Marcus treated reported an average of 62 percent less pain and 85 percent less interference with daily activities due to pain.

The SPOC device enables a much wider range of health care professionals to locate and treat back pain. In this way, it is as revolutionary as an X-ray machine. Just as X-rays gave physicians a clear picture of the body’s interior, the SPOC device provides a simple, repeatable way to determine the exact source of muscle pain. Equally important, medical professionals can learn to use SPOC’s device without extensive training.

We are now preparing for larger studies that will put our device into the hands of a broader range of medical professionals. Hospitals in several nations, including the United States, will carry out these studies, supported by an insurance company that believes the device may eliminate ineffective surgeries.

Because SPOC offers new hope to people with chronic back pain, we’ve been featured on such programs as CBS Evening News, ABC’s Eyewitness News and Good Morning America, as well as in newspapers and magazines.

It’s an exciting time for us, not only because we hope to do well professionally but because we can contribute to the improvement of public health and health care by helping to relieve the chronic pain that afflicts millions today.

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