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ROLE OF TENS IN PROPRIOCEPTION – A LITERATURE REVIEW
Author: Shannia S Azavedo1
, Annie Benny Mathew2
, Ashmita Patrao3
, Leah Mohandas4
1 Student, Department of Physiotherapy, Father Muller Medical College. 2 Student, Department
of Physiotherapy, Father Muller Medical College. 3 Assistant Professor, Department of
Physiotherapy, Father Muller Medical College. 4 Associate Professor, Department of Physiotherapy, Father Muller Medical College.
BACKGROUND:
Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) is a therapeutic modality that stimulates a
large number of sensory fibers and mechanoreceptors by delivering electrical current through the
skin. It has been used widely for its action at multiple levels on pain. TENS also has the potential
to improve function as it has an effect on upper motor neuron excitability through an increased
proprioceptive feedback.
DESIGN:
A search was conducted on various platforms such as PubMed, Google Scholar and OVID to
explore the effects of TENS on proprioception. After entering the keywords we retrieved 4005
studies. Based on titles we retrieved 300 studies, based on abstracts, 57 studies and based on full
text 6 studies were included in this literature review. We included only studies that had TENS as
the intervention and proprioception as the outcome.
RESULTS:
Two studies were conducted on healthy individuals with a frequency of 100HZ. Goniometer,
gyroscope, isokinetic dynamometer were used as outcome measures to evaluate overall
proprioception. Joint repositioning was accurate in the study with young adults but didn’t have
any impact on the study with older adults (>50 years). TENS when applied to knee osteoarthritis
(>40 years) and knee pain (20-40 years) had a significant reduction in joint positioning error, as
evaluated by infrared markers and motion analyzers.
CONCLUSION:
TENS improves proprioception and can be used in rehabilitation strategies targeting proprioception. Further studies may be needed to understand the exact mechanism and applicability.
KEY WORDS: “TENS” “PROPRIOCEPTION” “JOINT POSITION SENSE”
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