Hämäläinen O, Kemppainen P.
Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Helsinki University Hospital, Finland
DOI: 10.2340/1650197790222527

It has been claimed that the diadynamic currents have either analgesic or other beneficial effects during the treatment of various painful musculoskeletal disorders. However, no experimental or controlled clinical results have been presented to support these claims. In this study, the possible analgesic effect of the DF (diaphase fix)-current on experimental pain was evaluated. An ischemia was experimentally induced in the left arm of five healthy male volunteers by a modified submaximal effort tourniquet test. Each subject had two consecutive ten minute periods of ischemia, one with and another without the DF-current. The subjective pain responses to the ischemia were measured by the visual analogue scale. The DF-current did not cause any marked decrease in the mean pain responses in this experiment. This experiment did not support the idea of using the diadynamic currents in alleviating musculoskeletal pain.