Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation in Patients with Knee Osteoarthritis: Evidence from Randomized Controlled Trials
One article on PainSci cites Chen 2015: Zapped! Does TENS work for pain?
PainSci commentary on Chen 2015: ?This page is one of thousands in the PainScience.com bibliography. It is not a general article: it is focused on a single scientific paper, and it may provide only just enough context for the summary to make sense. Links to other papers and more general information are provided wherever possible.
A review of 18 trials concluded that TENS “might” relieve knee pain caused by osteoarthritis, but this is a rather optimistic word choice that the data doesn’t actually support: it’s based on just a small reduction in pain … so small that it wasn’t evidence when patients were assessed using another scoring system for arthritis disability (WOMAC). These people didn’t get better, or too little to care about.
original abstract †Abstracts here may not perfectly match originals, for a variety of technical and practical reasons. Some abstacts are truncated for my purposes here, if they are particularly long-winded and unhelpful. I occasionally add clarifying notes. And I make some minor corrections.
OBJECTIVES: Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) has been reported to relieve pain and improve function in patients with knee osteoarthritis. The purpose of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to evaluate the efficacy of TENS for the management of knee osteoarthritis.
METHODS: We searched Embase, PubMed, CENTRAL, SIGLE, PEDro and clinicaltrials.gov, up to June 2014 for literature related to TENS used for the treatment of knee osteoarthritis. Two authors independently screened the searched records based on the title and abstract. Information including the authors, study design, mean age, sex, study population, stimulation frequency (of TENS), outcome measures and follow-up periods were extracted by the two authors.
RESULTS: Eighteen trials were included in the qualitative systematic review, and 14 were included in the meta-analysis. TENS significantly decreased pain (SMD -0.79, 95%CI -1.31 to -0.27, P value<0.00001) compared with control groups. There was no significant difference in the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities (WOMAC) Osteoarthritis Index (SMD -0.13, 95%CI -0.35 to 0.1, P value=0.09) or the rate of all-cause discontinuation (RR 0.77, 95%CI 0.48 to 1.22, P value=0.94) between the TENS and control groups.
DISCUSSION: TENS might relieve pain due to knee osteoarthritis. Further randomized controlled trials should focus on large-scale studies and a longer duration of follow-up.
This page is part of the PainScience BIBLIOGRAPHY, which contains plain language summaries of thousands of scientific papers & others sources. It’s like a highly specialized blog. A few highlights:
- Photobiomodulation therapy is not better than placebo in patients with chronic nonspecific low back pain: a randomised placebo-controlled trial. Guimarães 2021 Pain.
- No effect of creatine monohydrate supplementation on inflammatory and cartilage degradation biomarkers in individuals with knee osteoarthritis. Cornish 2018 Nutr Res.
- The CANBACK trial: a randomised, controlled clinical trial of oral cannabidiol for people presenting to the emergency department with acute low back pain. Bebee 2021 Med J Aust.
- Relationships Between Sleep Quality and Pain-Related Factors for People with Chronic Low Back Pain: Tests of Reciprocal and Time of Day Effects. Gerhart 2017 Ann Behav Med.
- Modulation in the elastic properties of gastrocnemius muscle heads in individuals with plantar fasciitis and its relationship with pain. Zhou 2020 Sci Rep.