Cervico Brachialgia, Chronic Radicular Back Pain, Lumboischialgia
Conditions
Keywords
back pain, sciatica, electrotherapy, HTEMS, TENS
Brief summary
Sciatica is a common pain problem that affects not only the patient but also constitutes a socioeconomic burden and thus affects the whole society. So far, current pharmacologic therapies are inadequate for many patients. Therefore, we evaluated application of high-tone external muscle stimulation (HTEMS) compared to transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) on radicular pain associated with sciatica.
Detailed description
Hospital patients (n=100) with chronic sciatica and stable oral analgesic regimen were included into this randomized controlled cross-over trial. Each intervention was administered for a period of 45 min 5 times within 10 days, with a 3-day wash-out period before cross-over. Health impairments had been assessed using the visual analog scales (VAS) for radicular pain before and after intervention and differences in radicular pain between groups were analysed with the Mann-Whitney test.
Interventions
DEVICEHTEMS
DEVICETENS
Sponsors
gbo Medizintechnik AG
West German Center of Diabetes and Health
Study design
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
CROSSOVER
Primary purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
SINGLE (Outcomes Assessor)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
18 Years to 99 Years
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
* sciatica due to degenerative spine disorders * stable oral analgesic regimen
Exclusion criteria
* history of drug or alcohol abuse * cardiac pacemaker or defibrillator * pregnancy
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Back pain | 10 days | Back pain measured by an 11-point visual analogue scale (VAS) with 0 = none and 10 = worst pain imaginable |
Countries
Germany
Outcome results
None listed