Pain management is a highly complex challenge, which affects a large portion of patients both chronically and acutely. Understanding the key underlying intricacies of managing the severity and frequency of pain can be a critical deciding factor, which determines a patient’s well-being, health, quality of life, and recovery. There is a wide range of approaches in regards to pain management, some of which can be highly addictive, such as opioids. The given assessment will primarily focus on transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation or TENS, which utilizes electricity as the core reliever of pain.
Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation is among the promising methods of pain management, which reduces the level of pain in a number of ways. It is stated that “on the surface and just below it, electrical impulses balance out the nerve activity that transmit pain signals. Those pain signals travel to the spinal cord to a key spot called the dorsal horn” (Abaci, 2021, para. 3). In addition, TENS can reduce pain in a specific spot, which makes it a precision-based tool as well. Another application of TENS is focused on its direct use on the human brain, where targeting periaqueductal gray can enable the lowering of pain signals (Abaci, 2021). In other words, TENS’s implications are multifaceted, meaning that it can be applied for the treatment of both chronic and acute pain, and it can also be highly precise by reducing pain in a specific spot or decrease the general pain by targeting the key brain regions.
In conclusion, transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation is a promising and potentially highly effective form of pain management treatment, which be applied to a wide range of manifestations of pain. Ideas of use can involve small attachable devices for precision-based pain management, brain region targeting headwear devices, and spinal cord targeting devices.
Reference
Abaci, P. (2021). Can electricity relieve your pain? WebMD.