Melbourne, FL , Oct. 27, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Arthritis is the main cause of chronic back and neck pain. Whether it sits in the disc, the facet joint or the sacroiliac joint, arthritis accounts for roughly 99 percent of it. Deuk Spine Institute has performed more than 1,000 Deuk Plasma Rhizotomy® procedures for that pain over six years. The institute’s outcome data shows 99 percent elimination of back and neck pain coming from the facet joints and sacroiliac joints, and 85 percent elimination of knee, hip and shoulder pain, with a complication rate of less than 0.01 percent and no narcotic painkillers prescribed afterward. The procedure is performed by Ara Deukmedjian, M.D., the board-certified neurosurgeon who invented it and co-founded the institute in Melbourne, Florida. The United States Patent and Trademark Office has now issued three patents covering the technology behind it, the most recent on July 21, 2026.
The types of pain Deuk Plasma Rhizotomy® treats
Every case below is the same problem in a different joint. The joint has worn out, and the tiny nerves wrapped around it will not stop sending a pain signal to the brain. Deuk Plasma Rhizotomy® switches those nerves off. The joint itself is left alone. Nothing is removed, nothing is fused and nothing is implanted. The pain goes away without any change in functionality.
Neck pain from worn out joints in the neck (cervical facet arthritis)
Lower back pain from worn out joints in the lower back, after an injury or with age (lumbar facet arthritis)
Mid back pain between the shoulder blades (thoracic facet arthritis)
Pain where the spine meets the pelvis, felt in the lower back, hip and leg (sacroiliac joint pain)
Knee, hip and shoulder pain from worn out joints, the kind a surgeon says needs a replacement, and the same in the ankles, toes and hands (degenerative joint disease, or arthritis)
Deuk Spine Institute
Who the procedure is for
These are patients who have typically already been through physical therapy, anti inflammatories, steroid injections and radiofrequency ablation, and who have then been told they need a major operation. For the spine, that means a spinal fusion or an artificial disc. For the knee, hip or shoulder, it means a joint replacement for arthritis, also called degenerative joint disease. For the foot, it means an ankle or foot fusion.
Deuk Plasma Rhizotomy® is offered as the treatment to try before a replacement rather than after one. Joint replacements carry a recovery in which patients can do very little for six months to a year, they require narcotic painkillers, which are dangerous, addictive and carry a high potential for abuse, and they bring their own risks including infection and wear fragments. If the rhizotomy does not resolve the pain, the replacement is still available afterward.
The procedure also treats a group of patients whose replacement is already behind them. When someone continues to have severe knee, hip or shoulder pain after a joint replacement and their surgeon finds nothing wrong on the X-ray, the pain nerves around the joint are still reporting, and a rhizotomy can switch that signal off. It is not the right treatment for an infected or a broken artificial joint, which both require different surgery.
What the procedure involves
The procedure is ultra-minimally invasive. It is done on an outpatient basis through a 4 mm incision, smaller than a pencil eraser, under twilight sedation rather than general anesthesia. Image guidance steers the probe to the joint, where plasma energy is swept across the pain nerves surrounding it. Nothing is implanted. Every drug and device used is FDA approved.
Treating a joint takes about five minutes, and a typical procedure runs about 20 minutes, with less than 2 ml of bleeding on average. Recovery takes about 30 minutes, and the whole visit is a couple of hours. Patients go home the same day with a driver and have no restrictions on normal activity the next day. According to the institute, the pain nerves are permanently destroyed, which ends the pain while leaving the patient’s movement intact. One procedure is intended to last a lifetime, with no repeat treatments scheduled.
“Arthritis is what causes chronic back and neck pain, whether it is in the disc, the facet joint or the sacroiliac joint,” said Dr. Deukmedjian. “Our outcome data shows Deuk Plasma Rhizotomy® eliminates 99 percent of the back and neck pain coming from the facet joints and the sacroiliac joints, and 85 percent of knee, hip and shoulder pain. Patients are up and moving the same day, and we do not prescribe narcotic painkillers afterward. There is no other treatment for this pain you can say that about.”
Patient testimonials
Every one of these patients had been told the next step was a major operation, either a joint replacement, a fusion or an artificial disc. Each had Deuk Plasma Rhizotomy® instead, and each went home the same day. The five accounts below cover five different parts of the body.
Hip pain no more. A man had lived with arthritis pain in his right hip for three to four years. It kept him from working, and he had been using a tourniquet on the leg to get relief. He was told he needed a hip replacement. His procedure took about 15 minutes. He went home within the hour and walked the same day. “I am no longer in pain. There is no throbbing,” he said afterward. Read his story.
Shoulder pain gone. A woman had years of arthritis pain in her left shoulder that limited how far she could move her arm, and a shoulder replacement was the option in front of her. Through 4 mm incisions, the procedure destroyed the four pain nerves supplying the shoulder joint. Two weeks later she described the pain as almost gone and was back to gardening and cleaning her house. “The shoulder pain that I had in here, it is gone,” she said. Read her story.
Knee pain no more. A woman with years of arthritis pain in her knee was told she needed a knee replacement, and then told she was too young to have one. The procedure destroyed the three pain nerves supplying the knee joint. She was discharged 30 minutes later, took no pain medication, and was back at work the next morning, looking forward to playing with her grandchildren rather than watching from the sidelines. Read her story.
Sacroiliac joint finally pain free. A woman had lived with sacroiliac joint pain for 17 years. She had already been through fusion surgery on both sacroiliac joints, with hospital stays and implanted hardware, and none of it gave her lasting relief. She had the rhizotomy on both sides as an outpatient. She reported the pain gone the day after the procedure, took no painkillers, and flew home to West Virginia the next morning. “If you want your life back, come see Dr. Deuk,” she said. Read her story.
No more neck pain. A Texas patient had years of facet joint neck pain and had been told by nine different neurosurgeons and orthopedic surgeons that she needed an artificial disc. She researched the risks, refused it, and lived with the pain, which her medication was not touching. A diagnostic nerve block confirmed the facet joints as a pain source, and she had a cervical Deuk Laser Disc Repair and a cervical Deuk Plasma Rhizotomy®. Less than 24 hours after surgery she reported most of her symptoms gone and her posture holding straight without effort, and she had not taken the pain medication she was given. Read her story.
More patient accounts are published at deukspine.com/patient-testimonials.
Why the standard treatment for this pain fails
An arthritic joint does not hurt because of the joint itself. It hurts because tiny nerves wrapped around that joint keep reporting the damage to the brain. Dr. Deukmedjian calls them pain nerves. A rhizotomy treats the pain by interrupting them. The joint is left alone and the nerve that reports the pain is switched off, so the signal stops arriving.
The standard way to do that is radiofrequency ablation, which uses a needle. The surgeon places the needle tip where the nerve is expected to be and heats a small area around it. The problem is that these nerve branches are hair thin, and they do not sit in exactly the same place in every person. If the needle lands beside the nerve instead of on it, the pain comes back. Radiofrequency ablation fails more than half the time, and when it does work the relief lasts weeks to months, which is why patients are routinely told to come back for another one every three to six months.
Wanding takes a different approach. Instead of parking a needle in one spot, the surgeon energizes a larger probe and sweeps the tip back and forth across the surface of the bone where those nerve branches run, the way someone sweeps a flashlight across a wall instead of aiming a laser pointer at one brick. Rather than treating a single point and hoping the nerve was inside it, the sweep covers the entire area the nerve could occupy.
The patents put a number on that difference. Conventional radiofrequency ablation treats an area of roughly 4 square millimeters, about the size of a sesame seed, and covers only part of the target nerve. The wanding technique described in the patents treats between 10 and 1,000 square millimeters, at the upper end roughly the area of a postage stamp, which is what allows the full length of the nerve to be covered in a single pass.
“Those little nerve branches do not sit in the same place in every person,” said Dr. Deukmedjian. “That is why a needle in one spot fails so often, and why so many patients are back in the office six months later asking for another injection. When I sweep the tip across the whole surface, I am not guessing where the nerve is. I am covering everywhere it can be. That is the difference between managing someone’s pain and getting rid of it.”
The technology behind the outcomes is patented three ways
Two patents cover the method. The wanding rhizotomy method patent, US 11,937,869 B1, issued March 26, 2024, covers the core technique of moving an energized probe in multiple directions to treat a target nerve. The second method patent, US 12,239,362 B2, issued March 4, 2025, extends that motion to the nerves serving the facet joints of the spine along with the shoulders, hips, knees and sacroiliac joints.
The third patent covers the instrument. Issued July 21, 2026 as US 12,685,583 B2, it describes a rigid probe with a tip that can be energized and swept across a nerve under medical imaging guidance, and a syringe connection that lets the surgeon deliver medication such as a local anesthetic through that same probe, at the same spot, without switching tools. The grant contains eight claims and 26 sheets of drawings, and describes uses in the spine, hip, shoulder and knee. All three trace back to a provisional application filed January 20, 2023, and all three name Dr. Deukmedjian as inventor.
“The first two patents protect how the procedure is done. This one protects the instrument that does it,” he said. “Method and device, both covered.”
Because the technique and the instrument are both patented, Deuk Spine Institute is the only place the procedure is performed, and Dr. Deukmedjian is its only practitioner.
The three rhizotomy patents are part of a portfolio of five U.S. patents issued to Dr. Deukmedjian, which also covers a percutaneous treatment for piriformis syndrome performed through a one centimeter incision (US 12,290,301 B1, May 6, 2025) and a method of repairing spinal disc injury by delivering copper to the injury site (US 12,623,035 B2, May 12, 2026).
Deuk Spine Institute
Ara Deukmedjian, M.D., board-certified neurosurgeon and co-founder of Deuk Spine Institute.
The other half of the practice: laser spine surgery
Arthritis in the facet and sacroiliac joints is one source of chronic back and neck pain. The other, and the more common one, is the disc. Deuk Spine Institute treats disc pain with Deuk Laser Disc Repair, the laser spine surgery Dr. Deukmedjian invented and the only surgeon performing.
A disc does not hurt because it bulges. It hurts because there is a tear in the back wall of the disc with material from the center of the disc caught in that tear, and that material sets off a chemical inflammation that irritates the nerve. This is also why so many patients are treated for the wrong thing. A pinched or compressed nerve causes weakness, numbness and tingling. It does not cause pain. Pain comes from an irritated nerve.
Herniated disc, bulging disc, ruptured disc, protruded disc, extruded disc, prolapsed disc, slipped disc and degenerated disc all describe the same injury at different points in time. Deuk Laser Disc Repair treats that injury in the neck, the mid back and the lower back. Patients are discharged the same day and are not prescribed narcotic painkillers afterward.
An MRI is a picture of the anatomy, not a diagnosis of pain. Dr. Deukmedjian personally reviews the imaging and identifies which of these sources is generating a given patient’s pain before recommending a procedure.
About Dr. Deukmedjian
Ara Deukmedjian, M.D., is a board-certified neurosurgeon with more than 30 years in medicine and roughly 6,000 surgeries performed across his career. He completed a seven year neurological surgery residency at the University of Florida, Shands Hospital, and a two year National Institutes of Health research fellowship in epilepsy neurosurgery. He graduated #1 from the University of Southern California School of Medicine with highest distinction and served on the NASA space flight medical team at Kennedy Space Center for four Space Shuttle missions. He founded Deuk Spine Institute in 2004 with Sun Deukmedjian and is the inventor and sole practitioner of Deuk Laser Disc Repair and Deuk Plasma Rhizotomy®.
About Deuk Spine Institute
Deuk Spine Institute is a minimally invasive spine and joint surgery center in Melbourne, Florida, operating from Surgery Center of Viera and founded in 2004 by board-certified neurosurgeon Ara Deukmedjian, M.D., and Sun Deukmedjian. Roughly 45,000 patients have been treated at the institute. It treats neck, mid back, lower back and arthritis joint pain with three procedures Dr. Deukmedjian invented and is the only surgeon performing: Deuk Laser Disc Repair, the laser spine surgery for painful disc injuries; Deuk Plasma Rhizotomy®, the patented nerve ablation procedure for facet, sacroiliac and arthritis joint pain, covered by U.S. patents 11,937,869 B1, 12,239,362 B2 and 12,685,583 B2; and Deuk Piriformis Release. Patients are discharged the same day and are not prescribed narcotic painkillers after surgery. Patients anywhere can start with a free MRI review, where Dr. Deukmedjian personally reviews the imaging and identifies the source of the pain. More information is available at deukspine.com.
Media Contact
Deuk Spine Institute
7955 Spyglass Hill Rd, Melbourne, FL 32940
(321) 255-6670
Medical Disclaimer: This information is provided for general informational and educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Individual conditions, treatment eligibility, outcomes, recovery times, risks, and complications vary. No medical procedure can guarantee a particular result. Patient testimonials describe individual experiences and are not necessarily representative of the results other patients may experience. Individuals should consult with a qualified healthcare professional to determine the appropriate treatment for their specific condition.
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