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 recommendations for other researchers interested in assessing TENS in the management of postoperative pain.