Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation as adjunct to primary care management for tennis elbow: pragmatic randomised controlled trial (TATE trial).

Study Question: Can transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS), as a patient controlled adjunct to primary care management for tennis elbow, provide superior pain relief to primary care management alone.

Summary Answer: TENS conferred no additional clinical benefit over primary care management consisting of information and advice on analgesia and exercise for patients with tennis elbow, probably partly owing to poor adherence to treatment recommendations.

What Is Known And What This Paper Adds: A need exists for safe, self administered interventions to provide pain relief for patients with tennis elbow.

Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation as adjunct to primary care management for tennis elbow: pragmatic randomised controlled trial (TATE trial).

Objective: To investigate the effectiveness of supplementing information and advice on analgesia and exercise from a general practitioner with transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) as a non-drug form of analgesia to reduce pain intensity in patients with tennis elbow.

Design: Pragmatic randomised controlled trial in primary care.

Setting And: 38 general practices in the West Midlands, UK.

Interventions to improve adherence to exercise for chronic musculoskeletal pain in adults.

Background: Chronic musculoskeletal pain (CMP) is a major health problem, accounting for approximately one-quarter of general practice (GP) consultations in the United Kingdom (UK). Exercise and physical activity is beneficial for the most common types of CMP, such as back and knee pain. However, poor adherence to exercise and physical activity may limit long-term effectiveness.

Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation for the management of tennis elbow: a pragmatic randomized controlled trial: the TATE trial (ISRCTN 87141084).

Background: Tennis elbow is a common and often extremely painful musculoskeletal condition, which has considerable impact on individuals as well as economic implications for healthcare utilization and absence from work. Many management strategies have been studied in clinical trials. Whilst corticosteroid injections offer short term pain relief, this treatment is unpleasant and is used with caution due to an associated high risk of pain recurrence in the long term.

A randomised clinical trial of subgrouping and targeted treatment for low back pain compared with best current care. The STarT Back Trial Study Protocol.

Background: Back pain is a major health problem and many sufferers develop persistent symptoms. Detecting relevant subgroups of patients with non-specific low back pain has been highlighted as a priority area for research, as this could enable better secondary prevention through the targeting of prognostic indicators for persistent, disabling symptoms. We plan to conduct a randomised controlled trial to establish whether subgrouping using a novel tool, combined with targeted treatment, is better than best current care at reducing long-term disability from low back pain.