Control of Acute Postoperative Pain by Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation after Open Cardiac Operations: A Randomized Placebo-Controlled Prospective Study

Abstract

TENS was more effective than placebo TENS or control treatments in decreasing pain and limiting opioid and nonopioid medication intake during the first 24-hour period following MS.

Estimulação elétrica nervosa transcutânea após cirurgia de revascularização miocárdica

“…Several studies have concluded that TENS is effective in controlling postoperative pain after median sternotomy after cardiac surgery, confirming the results of this study, and it could be useful when patients had burning pain [27,28,[32][33][34].…”

“…Emmiller et al [28], Navarathnam et al [29], Lima et al [30] and Klin et al [31] evaluated the effects in their studies of TENS in cardiac postoperative and found that electrical stimulation decreases the level postoperative pain and reduces the amount of analgesics compared to placebo group or control group. A similar result was found in this study regarding pain reduction in TENS group, differing only in reducing pain in the control group, where it remained in this study.…”

Chronic Poststernotomy Pain

“…Evidence regarding its use in chronic pain is mixed. [134][135][136][137] Thoracic epidural anesthesia Benefit for acute postoperative pain; no known impact on chronic pain Intrathecal opioid injection Improved analgesia and decreased opioid consumption in acute postoperative period; no known benefit in the long term Paravertebral block Trend toward improved acute pain control as compared with thoracic epidural anesthesia; no known role for chronic pain prevention Intrapleural local anesthetic injection Improved early postoperative pain control (first postoperative day) Continuous wound catheter for prolonged local anesthetic delivery Improved acute postoperative pain; no data on chronic pain…”

Objectifying acupuncture effects by lung function and numeric rating scale in patients undergoing heart surgery

“…Interestingly, electrical skin stimulation reduces pain perception of the organism. This technique was termed transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS), which was successfully applied for poststernotomy pain management in several randomized clinical trials [13][14][15]. The stimulation of skin for pain reduction indicates that acupuncture as a technique applied since ages to treat pain associated with many diseases and symptoms may also be helpful for poststernotomy pain management.…”