Electrotherapy - Current Use

Current Use

Although a 1999 meta-analysis found that electrotherapy could speed the healing of wounds, during 2000 the Dutch Medical Council found that although it was widely used, there was insufficient evidence for its benefits. Since that time, a few publications have emerged that seem to support its efficacy, but data is still scarce.

The use of electrotherapy has been researched and accepted in the field of rehabilitation (electrical muscle stimulation). The American Physical Therapy Association acknowledges the use of Electrotherapy for:

1. Pain management

• Improves range of joint movement

2. Treatment of neuromuscular dysfunction

• Improvement of strength
• Improvement of motor control
• Retards muscle atrophy
• Improvement of local blood flow

3. Improves range of joint mobility

• Induces repeated stretching of contracted, shortened soft tissues

4. Tissue repair

• Enhances microcirculation and protein synthesis to heal wounds
• Restores integrity of connective and dermal tissues

5. Acute and chronic edema

• Accelerates absorption rate
• Affects blood vessel permeability
• Increases mobility of proteins, blood cells and lymphatic flow

6. Peripheral blood flow

• Induces arterial, venous and lymphatic flow

7. Iontophoresis

• Delivery of pharmacological agents

8. Urine and fecal incontinence

• Affects pelvic floor musculature to reduce pelvic pain and strengthen musculature
• Treatment may lead to complete continence

Electrotherapy is used for relaxation of muscle spasms, prevention and retardation of disuse atrophy, increase of local blood circulation, muscle rehabilitation and re-education electrical muscle stimulation, maintaining and increasing range of motion, management of chronic and intractable pain, post-traumatic acute pain, post surgical acute pain, immediate post-surgical stimulation of muscles to prevent venous thrombosis, wound healing and drug delivery.

Some of the treatment effectiveness mechanisms are little understood, with effectiveness and best practices for their use still anecdotal.

Electrotherapy devices have been studied in the treatment of chronic wounds and pressure ulcers. A 1999 meta-analysis of published trials found some evidence that electrotherapy could speed the healing of such wounds, though it was unclear which devices were most effective and which types of wounds were most likely to benefit. However, a more detailed review by the Cochrane Library found no evidence that electromagnetic therapy, a subset of electrotherapy, was effective in healing pressure ulcers or venous stasis ulcers.