Analgesic efficacy of the association of cryotherapy and transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation

• Autor(a) principal: Silva,Dalvania Alves da
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Outros Autores: Peixoto,Geísa Ferreira Gomes, Rodrigues,Karilane Maria Silvino, Farias,Vanessa Ximenes
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: BrJP (Online)
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2595-31922018000300274
• topic: Analgesia; Cryotherapy; Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation

ABSTRACT BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Cryotherapy and transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation are physiotherapeutic resources widely used for the treatment of pain, due to their analgesic actions proved by scientific evidence. The concomitant use of these two therapeutic modalities in clinical practice is becoming more and more recurrent, justified by the assumption of boosting the analgesic effect. However, some physiotherapists disagree with this practice and believe that the simultaneous use of cryotherapy and transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation nullifies its effects. The objective of this study was to carry out a bibliographic review of studies on the effects of the simultaneous use of cryotherapy and transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation in pain treatments. CONTENTS: We selected articles published between 2006-2018 in the databases Scielo, LILACS, Medline and Pubmed. The selection was based on the crossing of the keywords: transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, cryotherapy and analgesia. The final sample consisted of 6 articles. CONCLUSION: The results of the analysis of the selected articles showed that, as already scientifically proved, the effects of cryotherapy and transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation alone have their analgesic efficacy. However, most of the studies did not demonstrate a significant improvement in pain with the associated use of transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation and cryotherapy compared to the isolated use of these physiotherapeutic resources, reinforcing the need for further research to elucidate the issue.