Spinal cord stimulation reduces phantom limb pain by 70% in amputees

For the 1.5 million Americans who carry the ghost of a missing limb — its pain more real than the silence where sensation once lived — a team at the University of Pittsburgh has offered something rare: a credible answer. Using spinal cord stimulation devices already trusted by clinicians, researchers restored sensory feedback through prosthetic pressure sensors, reducing phantom limb pain by an average of 70 percent while also improving balance and stability. The intervention does not invent new tools so much as reimagine the purpose of existing ones, redirecting technology built to suppress p