Comparison of analgesic effect in patients with chronic low back pain treated with TENS and High Tone Power Therapy

Abstract

Introduction: Chronic low back pain impairs routinely performed activities and decreases quality of life. It may be caused by different conditions, however, the most frequent is osteoarthritis. Electrotherapy is a modality essentially applied in the treatment of chronic pain syndromes because of high efficacy and absence of side effects. Study aim: Comparison of the analgesic effect of Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation and High Tone Power Therapy in patients with chronic low back pain caused by osteoarthritis. Material and methods: The study included 50 people, 22 males and 28 females, of mean age 46.2±10 years with chronic low back pain caused by osteoarthritis. The study protocol included treatment with Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation or High Tone Power Therapy. Each participant was exposed to the particular modality 10 times. Participants were randomly divided into two groups: treated with High Tone Power Therapy (Group I) and with Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (Group II). Before and after treatment, the threshold of pain and pain intensity were measured with PainMatcher and a numeric rating scale. Results: The application of Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation or High Tone Power Therapy resulted in a decrease of the subjectively assessed pain intensity. A decrease was also observed in objective measurements. Conclusions: The demonstrated analgesic effectiveness of the applied therapies encourages their further use in the treatment of low back pain syndrome. These modalities seem to be an effective method of increasing the pain threshold, and thus reducing pain.

Keywords

• TENS
• High Tone Power Therapy
• low back pain