The Cochrane Collaboration Pain, Palliative Care and Supportive Care Collaborative Review Group.

The Pain, Palliative and Supportive care group is one of 50 collaborative review groups that make up the Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization with the task of preparing, maintaining and disseminating systematic reviews of the effects of healthcare. Cochrane reviews are published cumulatively four times a year on the Cochrane library (CD-ROM and Web-based), along with other useful material such as a register of some 300,000 randomized controlled trials. The group has identified some 20,000 randomized trials in pain and 1,200 in palliative care.

Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) for chronic pain.

Background: Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) is used in a variety of different clinical settings to treat a range of different acute and chronic pain conditions and has become popular with both patients and health professionals.

Objectives: To evaluate the effectiveness of TENS in chronic pain.

Search Strategy: The Cochrane Library, Embase, Medline, CINAHL and The Oxford Pain Database were searched.