Efficacy of interferential current on relieving pain of musculoskeletal origin – protocol of a systematic review and meta-analysis undertaken

Abstract

Introduction and Objective Interferential current IFC is one of the common electrotherapeutic modalities used in the treatment of painful conditions. Patients with musculoskeletal pain seek medical help in order to reduce their pain that could be achieved using IFC.The current review aims to analyze the recently available information regarding the efficacy of the IFC in alleviating the pain of musculoskeletal origin. State of knowledge IFC, as one of the medium frequency currents, has the advantage of being more comfortable and deeply penetrating so that it can reach deeper painful tissues. It has been proposed that IFC can relieve pain through stimulating different body mechanisms, such as the gate mechanism and the release of body opioids. However, the evidence behind the effectiveness of IFC as a pain-relieving modality for musculoskeletal pain has been poorly studied and still not conclusive Conclusions This systematic review will summarize the effects of IFC on relieving musculoskeletal pain as reported through improvement in visual analog scale, numeric pain rating scale, or the McGill pain questionnaire. Through searching multiple databases and including randomized controlled trials published during the last ten years, the findings of the current systematic review and meta-analysis will establish the quality of the recently available evidence and demonstrate if there will be a need for further studies.

Keywords

• interferential current
• pain
• musculoskeletal pain
• systematic review
• protocol