Скачать или смотреть Device behind the ear helping patients battle addiction

FLORENCE, Ky. (WKRC) - It could be a huge breakthrough in fighting the war against heroin addiction.

A small device that fits behind the ear is helping addicts get clean and sober. A Versailles-based Innovative Health Solutions created the small device. Several medical facilities in the Tri-State area are using it to help patients.

It's a small electronic device that fits in the palm of the hand. It's called the BRIDGE and medical professionals are hoping more people can use it beat heroin as well as other opioid addiction. The bridge goes behind the ear and it works on nerve points on the ear.

Katrina Lock is a nurse practitioner at Florence Medical Group and Rising Sun Modern Medicine, "What it does is it sends little electrical signals through those nerve points to the brain and it allows the brain to kind of calm down whenever it's in that up regulated," Lock said.

She's been using the BRIDGE since fall of 2015, and says it's been more effective in helping her patients battling the symptoms of withdrawal like severe pain and nausea.

Lock said, "It's not something that they have to take by mouth whenever they're already nauseous and sick and it works almost immediately within the first few minutes of having it on. Symptoms go from being really, really bad to being almost nothing and they wear it for five days during the worst time of their detox."

The BRIDGE only takes a few minutes to attach the device to the ear. Lock says more of her patients are staying clean with the BRIDGE. They've been able to go to work with it and live their daily lives.

"My patients are absolutely amazed by it. The ones that have used it couldn't be more thankful for it. It has really taken them from a point of hopelessness to where they're very hopeful for getting clean and sober, sometimes for the first time in their life," said Lock.

The cost for the device is $600. It is not covered by insurance, but the company is working with legislators to change that.