PENS therapy for pain

The effects of PENS therapy may vary from patient to patient. A single therapy session may produce varying levels of pain relief, from a few hours to a few months.

Pain may be relieved immediately or may take several days to begin to feel relief.

Patients are typically advised to keep a daily diary after therapy sessions, recording their pain levels each day. A pain rating scale from 0 to 10 can be used to do this, and each diary entry should indicate whether the pain rating has improved, worsened, or remained the same since the day before PENS.

Therapy may be repeated at intervals to maintain pain relief if the physician believes that this would be an appropriate and effective ongoing pain management therapy for the patient.

However, PENS therapy, like any other therapy, is not suitable and helpful for everyone. In such cases, this therapy can be used as a diagnostic tool by the physician, even if it has not produced any pain relief for the patient, and to help determine an appropriate alternative treatment plan.

PENS therapy can be a single diagnostic treatment (treatment session), multiple treatment sessions, or a continuous treatment regimen for different patients, depending on the patient's pain relief response (duration and level). It also allows the physician to determine whether the patient would benefit from continuous electrostimulation (a permanent implantable neurostimulator for pain relief).