METHODS: This is a prospective, observational study conducted on patients with chronic pain due to malignancy which is not responding to oral analgesics. A total of twenty patients were included in the study (ten males, ten females) with a visual analog scale score of >4 on oral analgesics. Patients aged 18-70 years with a life expectancy of >3 months having bony, neuropathic, or mixed type of pain were included in the study. A total of 12 sessions of scrambler therapy were planned, ten sessions on consecutive days and one session each on two follow-up visits after 1 week each. Each session lasted for 40 min. Pain relief and quality of life according to the World Health Organization Quality of Life were recorded as primary outcome variables.
RESULTS: All patients had good pain relief and improvement in all four domains of quality of life. Pain scores decreased significantly (P < 0.01) after each session and at each follow-up. Patients showed significant improvement in physical, psychological, social, and environmental health (P < 0.01) after the therapy.
CONCLUSIONS: Scrambler therapy offers a promising role in the pain physician\'s armamentarium as an adjunct to pharmacological therapy for the treatment of chronic drug-resistant cancer pain; it may bring down analgesic drug requirements significantly and improve quality of life in cancer patients. Larger prospective, randomized multicenter studies are needed to validate the findings of the small pilot studies published in literature so far.
方法:这是一个前瞻性的,对因恶性肿瘤引起的对口服镇痛药无反应的慢性疼痛患者进行的观察性研究。共有20名患者被纳入研究(10名男性,10名女性),口服镇痛药的视觉模拟量评分>4。患者年龄在18-70岁,预期寿命>3个月,有骨,神经病,或混合型疼痛纳入研究.共计划12次加扰器治疗,连续10天,每次1周后两次随访。每节持续40分钟。根据世界卫生组织的生活质量,疼痛缓解和生活质量被记录为主要结果变量。
结果:所有患者在所有四个方面的生活质量均有良好的疼痛缓解和改善。每次治疗后和每次随访时疼痛评分均显着降低(P<0.01)。患者在身体上表现出显著的改善,心理,社会,治疗后的环境卫生(P<0.01)。
结论:Scrambler疗法作为药物治疗慢性耐药癌性疼痛的辅助手段,在疼痛医生的医疗设备中具有很好的作用;它可以显着降低镇痛药物的需求并改善癌症患者的生活质量。更大的前景,我们需要随机多中心研究来验证迄今为止文献中发表的小型试点研究的结果.