Background. Pain accompanying the musculoskeletal disorders appears to be one of the most frequent medical problem. It concerns both office workers who sit for long hours in one position and people who do hard physical labor. The pain is usually difficult to treat. Change of the life style, pharmacotherapy and different techniques of physical therapy are all important. APS-therapy and TENS are the physical methods based on therapeutic use of the electrical current. They both can be very useful in many pain-related disorders, providing fast relief of symptoms. The aim of this pilot clinical study was to compare the analgesic efficacy of APS-therapy and TENS in chronic pain due to musculoskeletal disorders.
Material and methods. The study involved 25 patients with musculoskeletal disorders who suffered from chronic pain. Thirteen of them were treated by the use of TENS and 12 - by APS. In the TENS group each patient received treatment for 2 weeks and in the APS - for 3 weeks. TENS was administered for a period of 60 minutes while APS for 16 minutes, both 5 times a week. The treatment was given by portable units, that generated an APS waveform and TENS current. NRS evaluation was performed for 3 days of pre-treatment period, before each treatment, which reflected the pain situation of the previous 24 hours, and once daily for 2 weeks after the treatment.
Results. The study showed that both methods have almost equal analgesic efficacy. Comparing with the initial period, NRS significantly decreased during the treatment and observation. The difference between the mean values of NRS score in TENS and APS was not of the statistical significance.
Conclusion. Both TENS and APS-therapy may be the effective methods of nonpharmacological treatment of chronic pain in the musculoskeletal disorders.