Efficacy of transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) in the management of trigeminal neuralgia: A systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Trigeminal Neuralgia is one of the most painful disorders known to man. So making patient pain free and to achieve a better quality of life in TN patients is one of the biggest challenge. Non-invasive procedures like Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) have been tried clinically for Trigeminal neuralgia. Aim: The systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to compare and evaluate the efficacy of transcutaneous electric nerve stimulation in the management of trigeminal neuralgia. The present review has been registered with PROSPERO – An international prospective register of systematic review CRD42021254136. MATERIAL AND METHODS: An electronic search was done in PubMed, Cochrane Library, Science Direct, Google Scholar, EBSCOHOST. The assessments of articles were done using selection criteria and PRISMA guidelines Only prospective clinical trials like Randomized clinical trials (RCTs) and clinical trials were included in this review. A total of three studies were included in the meta -analysis, RESULTS: The proportion of total number of patients after TENS therapy across studies with p-value < 0.0001 for each which showed statistically significance. The overall difference in two groups was significant with standardize mean difference of 3.03 [95% CI: 2.50, 3.56]. CONCLUSIONS: TENS can be an effective treatment modality for trigeminal neuralgia in reducing the pain intensity with no reported side effects for patients with trigeminal neuralgia alone or even in combination with other first line drugs. Key words:TENS, TN, TENS, TN, Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation.