Comparing efficiency of using epidural analgesia or transcutaneus nerve stimulation on labour pain

Labour pain is one of the most drastic pains which women can experience through their lives. At the present time, there are both psychological and medicinal approaches to relieve this pain.Regional methods not only soothe the pain during labour but also ensure that the mother participates in the event of labour physically and emotionally. This participation has positive effects on mother and the child. Epidural analgesia is the best available method for obstetric analgesia.In common treatment of labour pain, non-pharmacological pain treatment methods are also preferred and being used efficiently. Among these methods, a prominent method is TENS (Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation). TENS is an electrical current aiming pain relief which is applied through the electrodes placed on the surface of skin.In this study, a research on the efficiency of TENS application in reducing the amount and duration of epidural analgesics in the course of labour is performed due to the fact that TENS application barely has side effects and has advantages in applying process such as easiness and being low cost.Two groups of women were created: First group of women whom treated only with epidural analgesia and the second group of women whom treated with both TENS application and epidural analgesia. 50 patients for each group were selected randomly. Patients in the first group were given analgesic medicine in epidural way. Patients in the second group were treated with TENS application first. After the application, levels of pain of the patients were determined via the visual analogue scale (VAS) score. The difference between the pain levels before and after TENS application were measured and recorded in millimetres. Patients who had VAS value of 3 and over were given analgesic medicine through the current epidural catheter. In both groups, VAS values of 3 or under were aimed to be achieved.Comparing first and the second groups in terms of dosages given, it is detected that the second group which was treated with TENS application additionally needed less analgesic medicine looking at the statistics.Also comparing two groups in terms of length of labour process, the second phase of labour was considerably shorter in the second group.The findings in this study shows that TENS application is not enough to relieve pain during a labour. However, when combined with epidural analgesia it is an effective method since it reduces the amount of analgesic medicine used in epidural approach.