EFFECT OF HIGH TENS ON PERCUTANEOUS NEPHROSTOLITHOTOMY (PCNL) POSTOPERATIVE NAUSEA AND VOMITING.

Background: Despite advances in antiemetic treatments, complications are still problematic for a significant number of patients after percutaneous nephrostolithotomy. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of using High Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS) on the severity of nausea and vomiting after percutaneous nephrostolithotomyMethods & Materials: In this study, 72 patients who underwent percutaneous nephrostolithotomy in Ghaem Hospital of Mashhad in 2016, were examined. This clinical trial, included three groups and was single blinded. Patients were randomly divided into three groups: control (24 peoples), intervention (24 peoples) and placebo (24 peoples). After surgery, in the intervention group, TENS with a frequency of 100 Hz, and current intensity based on patient tolerance at a distance of 5 cm from the nephrostomy for 20 minutes twice with an interval of six hours was established. In the placebo group, TENS unit was turned on, but with zero current intensity and frequency, i.e. no electrical stimulation. The severity of nausea and vomiting before and after the intervention was measured for 18 hours. For statictical analysis SPSS Software version 20 and chi-square test, Fisher's exact test, Mnn-whitney test, kruskal-wallis test, anova and Mauchly, s test, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test were used. Meanwhile utilized P value under 0.05 was assumed as significant in statistic tests. Results: The results showed that the severity of nausea and frequency of vomiting in the TENS group was lower than those of the placebo and control group but no statistically significant difference was observed between the three groups in the 18 hours after percutaneous nephrostolithotomy. The p-value was 0.96 and 0.74 for severity of nausea and vomiting, respectively. Conclusions: High TENS has not been able to significantly reduce nausea and vomiting in patients after percutaneous nephrostolithotomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]