Kenny Lopez shares how basivertebral nerve ablation at Scripps relieved chronic back pain and helped him run a marathon again.

Kenny Lopez is an athlete — and not just any kind of athlete. 

He’s the kind who played sports throughout his youth and carried that discipline into adulthood. The kind who trains for marathons like clockwork and eagerly looks forward to his longstanding tradition of running the Los Angeles Marathon. The kind who even considers his daily hour-long interval training workouts “me time” — the one hour each day he won’t give up for anything. So, if Kenny were to get injured, it would be reasonable to suspect the cause was running or the gym. 

Instead, Kenny’s debilitating injury occurred on a regular day in the life of a single dad. In April 2024, Kenny was lifting his toddler out of his car seat when he felt a wave of heat rush over his back. Instantly, he knew it was pain like nothing he had experienced in all his athletic history. 

“I was 34 years old at the time, and I’d never had back pain — even in all my years playing hockey and as a runner,” he says. “The initial onset felt like I tweaked or pulled a muscle, but for a week I couldn’t fully straighten my back or bend backward.” 

That week turned into months of pain that forced him to either be fully upright or completely horizontal, with spasms lasting hours and no clear answers or effective treatment. “I have a high pain tolerance, but this was just a constant, dull, agonizing pain that would not go away,” he explains. “The spasms would be so bad that my 3-year-old son would yell, ‘Ahh, my back!’ when he saw me in pain.” 

Kenny was prescribed muscle relaxers that either upset his stomach or made him too tired to function. He received cortisol injections, but they were just a Band-Aid and the pain inevitably returned. He tried chiropractic and physical therapy. Nothing helped. 

“By my birthday in December, I was miserable,” he says. “I couldn’t do basic things. I couldn’t even sit down without excruciating pain.” 

While looking for an effective treatment option, Kenny had met Kevin “Buzz” Barrette, MD, a physiatrist and interventional pain specialist, and head of the division of interventional pain medicine in the department of orthopedic surgery at Scripps Clinic Jefferson in Oceanside and Scripps Clinic Encinitas. 

Dr. Barrette had mentioned a relatively new therapy called basivertebral nerve ablation (BVN), a minimally invasive procedure that uses radiofrequency to effectively burn the nerve pain away. 

“We have been doing spinal ablation procedures since the 1980s, using heat to kill nerves,” explains Dr. Barrette. “What’s unique about BVN is that it targets the basivertebral nerve, which causes a very specific type of back pain. For decades, we’ve been trying to find a cure for this type of back pain. People have tried all kinds of things, from injections to steroids to gels, and even doing regular spinal nerve ablations, with minimal to no evidence of long-term benefits.” 

Those results, or lack thereof, led to a hypothesis: Maybe this pain was not actually disc pain. Maybe it was pain in the surrounding vertebral structures. Dr. Barrette participated in the research that validated this theory. 

“People with this type of back pain have changes in their vertebral endplates, the area surrounding the disc,” he explains. “There are more pain receptors in the vertebral end plate than in the disc. That’s why disc treatment failed.” 

Results from the research were so robust that BVN has gained traction during the past several years as a successful treatment method for people with vertebrogenic back pain. 

Despite his injury, Kenny was still going to the gym, pushing through the pain. He even completed the 2024 Los Angeles Marathon, struggling the entire way. 

“Against all advice, I let my ego and my stubbornness take over and said, ‘I run the marathon every year, and I’m not going to let this stop me — even if I have to crawl across the finish line, I’m going to do it,’” he says. “It hit me like a train.” 

The 2025 marathon was even more painful and Kenny walked part of the way. Though he still crossed the finish line, he was left embarrassed, humbled and disappointed. He was also spurred into action. 

After trying and exhausting all other treatment methods, Kenny gave in to his own reluctance and decided to give the BVN procedure a try. 

“I don’t want to call it a last resort, but I really had tried everything,” he says. “I was doing all the things, but nothing was working. When I went back to Dr. Barrette, he explained BVN again. At that point, it was either try it or keep living in pain — and I couldn’t go on like that because I was barely able to function.” 

In November 2025, Kenny underwent the BVN procedure at Scripps Medical Center Jefferson in Oceanside. The outpatient procedure is done under twilight anesthesia and takes roughly 60 minutes to perform. 

“It’s a little bigger of a procedure than an epidural or the other type of spinal ablation. It’s basically a root canal for the spine,” Dr. Barrette says. “We traverse through the bone and essentially build a little channel and slide an electrode through the needle. That then creates a heat energy in the bone to kill that nerve.” 

The small incision is sealed with glue, and the patient is able to go home the same day. 

“There is minimal downtime and recovery,” Dr. Barrette says. 

For Kenny, relief was almost immediate. 

“I went in hoping to have at least some relief,” he says. “I was terrified, but the staff and nurses were wonderful. I had great music in the OR, and I was completely comfortable with Dr. Barrette. Within 24 hours, I was up and moving around. By the next day, I felt like a normal human being again — I could get out of bed, sit down and stand back up without pain. That’s how humbling the injury had been. It felt like I was discovering everyday things for the first time.” 

Since his successful BVN procedure last fall, Kenny has truly hit the ground running. He is still doing his daily gym routine, and he trained for and completed the 2026 Los Angeles Marathon, running the entire way. 

“In 2025, I was in so much pain that I thought it was going to be my last marathon,” he says. “When I was training for 2026, I still had the procedure in the back of my mind. But I had to flip the script. I told myself to have fun, enjoy the opportunity, go slow and steady and take it all in. And that’s exactly what I did. It was amazing. When I crossed the finish line, I was so happy that I didn’t even care about my finish time.” 

Kenny may be able to run 26.2 miles, but it’s still the little things that make him the happiest. 

“I really appreciate the simple things, like the ability to swing my feet out of bed — that’s how bad it got,” he says. “Now, I feel great. It’s always there in the back of my mind to not push myself too hard, but I’ve had zero complications and no returning pain since the procedure.” 

Dr. Barrette says it’s unlikely that he will. 

“The best thing about this type of ablation is that nerves in bone can’t regenerate,” he notes. “While it’s possible for someone to develop the problem in another nerve, the one we ablated during the procedure should be one and done. Plus, Kenny was a perfect candidate — he’s a healthy guy and most of his spine looks fantastic.” 

For Kenny, “fantastic” is a perfect word to describe his experience with Dr. Barrette and Scripps. 

“Dr. Barrette is a miracle worker,” he says. “Before this, I was a total non-believer, but this experience really turned my life around. I would highly recommend Dr. Barrette, his staff, Scripps and the BVN procedure to anyone with the same type of back pain. Just look at my story and what it can do for people.”