Long term results of peripheral conditioning stimulation as an analgesic measure in chronic pain
- 1 June 1979
- journal article
- Published by Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health) in Pain
- Vol. 6 (3), 335-347
- https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-3959(79)90052-6
Abstract
In the present study 123 patients with chronic pain, consecutively referred for symptomatic pain treatment, were given peripheral conditioning stimulation as an analgesic measure and were followed for 2 years or till they terminated the treatment. The stimulation was either conventional transcutaneous nerve stimulation (TNS) [35] of mainly cutaneous afferents with high frequency (10-100 Hz) or acupuncture-like TNS [11] where muscle nerves are activated at a low repetition rate (1-4 Hz) with small trains of stimuli. The follow-up showed that 55, 41 and 31% of the patients continued the treatment after 3, 12 and 24 months, respectively. About 30% of the patients had to use acupuncture-like TNS to get useful analgesia, defined as a desire of the patient to continue stimulation treatment. Three-quarters of the successfully relieved patients reported more than 50% pain relief as measured from visual analogue scales and half of these reported an increased social activity and a decrease of analgesic drug intake by more than 50%. Psychogenic and visceral pains were less suitable for TNS treatment. It is concluded that peripheral conditioning stimulation is a valuable therapy in cases of chronic pain and that both conventional and acupuncture-like TNS should be tried before considering implantable devices or destructive surgery.Keywords
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