Scrambler Therapy for the Management of Chronic Oncologic Pain: Integrative Literature Review

• Autor(a) principal: Rezende, Laura Ferreira de
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Outros Autores: Vilas Boas, Vanessa Fonseca, Carvalho, Regiane Luz, Lenzi, Juliana
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por; eng
• Título da fonte: Revista Brasileira de Cancerologia (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://rbc.inca.gov.br/index.php/revista/article/view/1656
• topic: neoplasias; estimulação elétrica nervosa transcutânea; manejo da dor; dor do câncer/terapia; dor crônica; neoplasms; transcutaneous electric nerve stimulation; pain management; cancer pain/therapy; chronic pain; neoplasias; estimulación eléctrica transcutánea del nervio; manejo del dolor; dolor en cáncer/terapia; dolor crónico

Introduction: Scrambler therapy is a novel, non-invasive pain modifying technique that utilizes transcutaneous electrical stimulation of pain fibers with the intent of re-organizing maladaptive signaling pathways. Objective: Evaluate the benefits of Scrambler therapy to manage the intensity of pain in oncologic patients. Method: Integrative literature review based on Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) in the electronic databases LILACS, PEDro, SciELO and PubMed. The descriptors “Scrambler therapy”, “cancer”, “pain” were randomly combined in addition to the Boolean operators AND, OR in Portuguese, English and Spanish with no time limitation. Results: For this review, 15 articles were found relevant. The Scrambler therapy machine is based on 5 artificial neurons controlled by an optimized algorithm to provide safety and effectiveness. The hardware receives information from the algorithm that creates the strings of “non-pain,” and processes them by transforming into potential flows of synthetic action (i.e. created by technology) functionally compatible with endogenous flows. Pain scrambler therapy had a potential to decrease pain in cancer patients. Conclusion: The positive findings from preliminary studies with Scrambler therapy endorses the benefits this device provides to manage oncologic pain.