Why is TENS therapy ranked AFTER hydrocodone (a opiate narcotic)? It seems like it should be right after tylenal or physical therapy. Is there any risks or downside to TENS therapy?
Let me clarify that the list isn’t an official one from an official list of interventions in a hard and fast order. Rather, it’s what I see most often, and the order of events I see most often, in my job as a home health nurse. As to why TENS isn’t used more often, or sooner - money, mostly, I think - Medicare will only pay for a TENS unit for very specific diagnoses, after other therapies (including painkillers) have been tried and documented as failing to provide relief. Patient compliance and training, after that; they don’t always like taking the 15-20 minutes necessary to do it, and they’re sometimes scared of it and/or they have trouble reaching the spot the pads need to be in and may not have someone to help them. And coming in a distant fourth - many doctors don’t know about or have much faith in TENS. I’ve got a couple of doctors who prescribe them early and often, but most of them I’ve got to talk into it, and a few are just completely unwilling to try it.
The only downside I know of is that eventually TENS just stops working. You can develop a tolerance to it just like you can medications, and in a surprisingly short time - perhaps as little as a week.It seems as though using both low and high modulated frequencies might avert the tolerance issue, but once a thing gets a bad rep, it’s hard to modify people’s thinking about it. For more info, you’d have to ask a Physical Therapist - they know much more about TENS than I do.
How effective is TENS compared to narcotic painkillers and have long do the pain killing effects last after one session?
No idea. I can’t find a study comparing the two directly - which may be why Medicare is reluctant to pay. Anecdotally, most of my patients who have tried TENS and are trained by my best Physical Therapists in how to do it end up throwing out their pain meds and don’t ask for them again while I’m seeing them (which is generally 2-6 months.) Whether they ask for the meds again later, I couldn’t tell you.
Do we have any pain specialists on the Dope?
It’s usually No. 2 for me which is why I rarely bother. I’ll have some chest or stomach pain, wind up taking $500 in tests and be told “I dunno.” If it’s something obvious like a bad cough where I’ll get some antibiotics or if my arm got cut off and I need it re-attached then sure. Everything in the middle of those ends invariably proves a complete waste of my time and money (and it’s never just a little bit of either).
I am only a pain specialist of my own pain. I was given a tens unit for a shoulder pain and it worked as well as any narcotic but not for as long. When I had my knee replaced I would use the Tens unit before physical therapy and the therapy would go much easier. In both cases I only used the units for about 3 weeks each before they did not seem to help much. I was a VA patient for both.
Yes I had the X-Ray and physical Therapy was recommended. Fish Oil was the better solution
So what dream or Ouija board suggested fish oil in the first place?
One of my coworkers
I may have missed the answer above, but - did you actually try PT?
No because I had family members who tried it and it didn’t work
Anamen, I think you’re wrong.
Try this:
I go to the doctor with a sore throat. After a thorough work up the conclusion is that I do not have acute epiglottitis, throat cancer, fulminant streptococcal infection or esophageal varices. What I do have in one of a dozen viruses that cause similar symptoms and usually run their course. Knowing which virus is not as important as knowing what I don’t have.
Your really your own primary doctor, what your GP did was to give you the tier one hypochondriac diagnoses and get you out of the office. I think it would have been better for you, had she referred you to a doctor that specializes in sports medicine, and quite possibly a foot doctor. I dont have any thing to add about your supplements, but arthritis is agrravated by weather conditions, so better weather might give you a false positive about the effects of the supplements.
Declan
Of course.
No doctor is running tests on you for all that stuff because you come in with a sore throat. To undergo tissue removal from your throat for a biopsy is not nothing, you know. Even if they did test for that stuff, how and why is it more important to know you don’t have any of them when you don’t have them? There is no treatment you must start on, and you remain as you were.
Given the substitution prevalent in the supplements industry, I wouldn’t buy anything from GNC or similar stores as there’s no guarantee that what the label says is in the bottle is in the bottle.
Dunno about oil, but I think we may be the fish.
:smack:
This is exactly why we have not evolved to be rational creatures.
So, really, your doctor provided you with a diagnosis (OA,) recommended a mild pain reliever to alleviate symptoms temporarily, and physical therapy to improve symptoms (long-term.) That’s not really the big fat nothing that you say you wasted your money on. Sounds like exactly what I’d expect, in fact.
But, if you aren’t going to listen to the doctor or follow a treatment plan, why waste her time and your time and money?