151 – Scrambler Therapy: how good is it at treating chronic pain

A viewer question prompts Chris and Sophie to look into scrambler therapy. A medical therapy for chronic pain with a silly name that sounds like it should be pseudoscience, but actually isn’t. How is it different from Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS)? How good is the evidence and how much of the benefit is actually a placebo response.

 

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Obviously, Chris is not your doctor (probably). This podcast is not medical advice for you; it is what we call information.

 References:

1)    2016 review of scrambler therapy for chronic pain

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-016-3177-3

2)    2018 update https://doi.org/10.1177/1534735419845143

• Key studies:
• Sabato (2005) – 226 patients: 80% had >50% pain reduction
• Marineo (2011) – RCT: 91% pain reduction in Scrambler group vs. 28% in controls
• Ricci (2012) – 82 patients: Mean pain scores dropped from 6.2/10 prior to treatment to 1.6 just after completing 10 treatment days to 2.9, 2 weeks after finishing treatment.
• Compagnone (2015) – 201 patients: pain went from 7.41 to 1.6
• Notaro (2015) – All patients had ≥50% pain reduction; relief lasted ~8 weeks; sleep improved
• Pachman (2014) – 37 patients: 53% average pain reduction; effect lasted 10 weeks
• One ‘no results’ study:  Campbell (2013) – 14 patients, RCT with sham control; no improvement—but team lacked experience, which may have skewed results.