A CONTROLLED STUDY TO EVALUATE THE ANALGESIC EFFECT OF TRANSCUTANEOUS ELECTRIC NERVE STIMULATION ON POST-OPERATIVE PAIN IN PATIENTS OF CARDIAC OPERATION: PATIENT-CONTROLLED ANALGESIA AS THE EVALUATION CRITERION
Post-operative pain is a common outcome after a surgical operation. Narcotic analgesic or local anesthetics are usually used in this condition. Both of them may lead to undesired side-effects. Recently, transcutaneous electric nerve stimulation (TENS) was found to be useful in post-operative analgesia after cardiac surgery. However, results of the studies remaine controversial. In the present study, we examined the analgesic effect of TENS on post-operative pain in 33 patients immediately after cardiac operation. The dosage of narcotic analgesics in patient controlled analgesia (PCA) were used as the evaluative criterion. A mock TENS group was used as control. The results show that TENS reduced the pain score with visual analogue scale at the presence of PCA. TENS also reduced the number of demands and injections of PCA (ANOVA, P<0.01) compared with control group. Our work suggests that TENS may be proved to be a useful method in treating post-operative pain after cardiac surgery.