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InterStim® Implant Instructions
Congratulations on doing well with your test and moving forward to the long-term therapy! We are thrilled to play a role in helping you restore control so you can reclaim your life. The long-term therapy procedure, or implant, typically takes about 30 minutes, and we do it in the Medicare-certified surgical suite, right in our facility. The IV sedation given by our anesthesia provider will make you comfortable during and after the procedure, but you won’t have to go completely to sleep for the procedure.
As we’ve discussed before, we place the little wire and battery completely under the skin. The wire is located under the skin in the same place as your temporary wire, a few inches above the tip of your tailbone. The battery is placed just under the skin in the fatty part of the upper buttocks, below your waistline but above where you sit. That’s it. A little wire and a little battery. Everything is under the skin, and no one knows it’s there.
You will have two small incisions – one for the wire and one for the battery. The stitches for those incisions will be hidden under the skin and dissolve on their own. We will place steri-strips over the incisions (they look like little band-aids), then cover each of them with a clear dressing that keeps them clean and dry.
It’s important for you to know that your care with us doesn’t stop on the day of your implant. We’re in this together and will do everything in our power to make sure you do well with it long-term. In fact, we don’t want you to ever have to find another urologist or gynecologist to help you with this therapy. If there’s ever a time you aren’t doing as well as you’d like or just have questions about your therapy, please let us know. If we don’t hear from you, our assumption is that you are doing great!
Before leaving, our staff will provide you with the name, cell phone number, and email address of your patient success specialist. Going forward, this specialist will be your point of contact for all InterStim® related questions. Most of the time we can help you over the phone, but, if for whatever reason we can’t, we’ll be happy to bring you back to the clinic, or in some cases, your specialist can make a house call to take care of you.
We expect you to do very well with this therapy, but we also know overactive bladder is a chronic problem with many contributing factors. InterStim® is a life-changing therapy for many of our patients. For some, it completely resolves their issue. For others, it takes a problem that’s really big and makes it much more manageable. But you may not always be perfect. From time to time, if you have a bad day or a bad night, that’s ok. But if you’re having a string of bad days or nights and need help adjusting your therapy, please reach out to your patient success specialist. We don’t care if it’s 6 weeks from now or 6 years from now, if you’re ever having an issue, we expect to hear from you. You can call, text, or email your patient success specialist and we will make sure you are taken care of.
Thanks for allowing us to be a long-term partner with your care. We pray that you will do well with the procedure, have an uneventful recovery, and experience long-term success!
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