Neurostimulation's Billion-Dollar Markets

Beyond the functional stimulation of muscles to get them moving, electrical stimulation can also operate on blood vessels, membranes, and receptors-targets in the body once regarded as the domain of pharmaceuticals. Indeed, driving sales of $2 billion in the neurostimulation industry in 2005 and growth rates of almost 20% going forward, are large-market clinical indications that haven't been well-served by drugs: pain, epilepsy, depression, stroke, urinary incontinence, Parkinson's disease, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. For some of these disorders, chronic neurostimulation-of the deep brain, the spinal cord, the vagus and other nerves-promises site-specific, side-effect free and reversible therapies that have the potential to be efficacious where drugs can't.