Diaphragm Pacer
Sometimes N=1 Becomes the Beginning of Something Much Bigger In January 2009, my son Alex became the first child implanted with Dr. Raymond Onders’ intramuscular NeuRx Diaphragm Pacing System. He was 10 years old. At that moment, pediatric experience with this particular system was essentially: N = 1. Alex. That distinction matters because diaphragm pacing itself was not new. Earlier systems that stimulated the phrenic nerve had been used in some children for decades. But Dr. Onders and his team at University Hospitals in Cleveland had developed a different approach: a minimally invasive laparoscopic procedure that places electrodes directly into the diaphragm at carefully mapped motor points. Before Alex, the NeuRx system had been used in adults, including adults who had sustained spinal cord injuries as children. The research team had actually published work in 2007 specifically examining those patients as they prepared protocols for eventually implanting children youn...
