Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation for Pain Control After Spinal Fusion with Harrington Rods A Clinical Report

During the past two years, we have been using transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) for pain control after spinal fusion with Harrington rods. This report describes our postoperative pain management program and our evaluation of its effectiveness. We examined postoperative pain medication usage and found that patients using TENS received fewer doses of several commonly prescribed pain drugs than did patients not using TENS devices. Difficulties we encountered in evaluating our program are described along with recommenda-tions for other researchers interested in assessing TENS in the management of postoperative pain. Key Words: Electrical stimulation, Pain, Physical therapy. Pain control is an important consid-eration in the postoperative manage-ment of surgical patients. One technique that has helped control pain in recent years is transcutaneous electrical nerv