ABSTRACT:
Background: Low back pain is a significant debilitating symptom which is often neglected by health professionals during stroke management in clinical practice.
Method: A quasi-experimental study with 14 recruited stroke survivors with previous diagnosis of low back pain and they were divided into conventional and acupuncture-like TENS mode group using the simple random sampling method. Baseline was pain using the Virtual Analogue Scale and functional disability of low back pain using the Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) and Rowland Morris Questionnaire (RMQ). Descriptive statistics, Wilcoxon Test, Friedmann (ANOVA) and Mann Whitney were used to analyse the data with alpha set at 0.05.
RESULTS: Participants’ age ranged between 33 to 64 years. Majority of the female participants (64.3%) had a higher prevalence of low back pain. All participants suffered ischaemic stroke and majority (92.9%) of them had had one episode of stroke. Conventional TENS group mean pre-intervention pain rating was 7.14±0.90 and post-intervention was 1.14±0.38 and a significance change was found p <0.001 while acupuncture-like TENS group mean was pre-intervention 7.43±1.13 and post-intervention 2.86±0.90 with significant change found from pre- to post p <0.001. When compared, the change in pain rating, mean change for conventional TENS was -6.00±0.82 and acupuncture-like TENS was -4.57±1.13 was statistically significant p= 0.019. Functional disability; ODI score for conventional TENS from pre to post had a significant change (p = 0.018) and acupuncture-like TENS had a significant change pre- to post (p= 0.018) with a non-significant difference when effects were compared p= 0.245. The change from pre- to post for RMQ score for conventional TENS was significant p = 0.018 and so was for acupuncture-like TENS (p= 0.028). When compared, there was none statistical difference p= 0.949.
CONCLUSION: Both modes of TENS proved to be effective in the reduction of low back pain and functional disability in stroke survivors. However, conventional mode of TENS had a reduction effect on low back relative to acupuncture-like mode TENS when compared. Survivors of stroke with low back pain should be treated with conventional TENS but both modes can be used in reducing functional disability in this population.
Keywords: Low back pain, stroke survivors, Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation, conventional and acupuncture-like TENS.
