Clinical Rehabilitation | 2021
Microcurrent therapy – more transparency is needed in used parameters
Abstract
Dear Prof. Wade, We have read with great interest the paper titled “Efficacy of microcurrent therapy (MCT) for treatment of acute knee pain: A randomized doubleblinded controlled clinical trial” by Daryl Lawson et al.1 This will indeed enhance the understanding of this new treatment method. Microcurrent therapy has the potential to become an internationally recognized newer modality in electrotherapy. A lot of interesting questions are still unanswered and further high quality studies akin to Lawson et al.’s work are required. Impetus to further studies on this topic need disclosure of all the parameters that have been used (e.g. amplitude, intensity, frequency, shape, electric charge, the length and width of the electrodes, etc.). This will allow comparability of different RCTs. Therefore, we would like to emphasize on the precise reporting of the parameters in this paper.1 Electrode placement, electrode size, intensity, frequency, and currency have been explained. Unfortunately, this is not a self-sufficiency according to published RCTs.2–4 Although the modalities of the current have been clarified by Lawson et al., the duration of treatment and impulse is unfortunately missing or clouded. The authors describe that the patients wore the electrodes for 3 hours per day. But, it would be great if authors could describe the duration of continuous microcurrent treatment with 0.2 Hz? Were there any kinds of defined pulsetrains followed by interpulse-breaks or other changes like it is usual in microcurrent therapy? Was it really a continuous current over 3 hours without any inter-pulse intervals? How long was the duration of the single impulse that was generated every 5 seconds (=0.2 Hz)? A point of minor criticism of ours is that Lawson et al. state that this “was the first double-blinded randomized clinical trial using microtens device with people that have acute knee pain” (Discussion, page 7). Recently we have also published a double blinded RCT on patients with knee pain due to osteoarthritis treated with microcurrent therapy with different intensities.5 Additionally, in our published RCT we have added one more group with no Microcurrent therapy – more transparency is needed in used parameters