CES units were becoming more widely used in pain clinics at the dawning of the 21st century. The clinics typically do not wait for pain studies to be completed, but simply try CES with their patients to see what effect they can observe, then compare it with their historical experience with those same types of patients. A typical such clinic is one just outside Dallas, Texas. A nursing assistant puts CES electrodes on patients as they enter the waiting room to await their turn with physicians or other therapists. The wait can vary from a few minutes to a half hour, depending on the patient load at a given time. The patients complete a 10 point self rated pain score prior to receiving CES. When they are called into treatment by the treatment staff, the CES is removed, the amount of time they were on the device is recorded, as a post CES self rated pain score if obtained.
The clinic has become so enthusiastic about the results, that this protocol has become a permanent part of their core treatment program. They now enthusiastically prescribe CES home units for their large number of patients who now request them, and the staff reports their clinic is much more effectively treating chronic pain than they were previously.
Pain clinic treatment results have been published, however. An interesting CES study was completed in a pain clinic near Bombay, India, in 2001. It was an open clinical trial of CES, used alone as a treatment of pain patients who had been refractory to all other previous efforts of treatment of their pain at the clinic. They were given CES treatments one hour per day, 5 days a week, for three weeks. They were asked to rate their pain level on a VAS scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the most intense pain. Following treatment their mean self reported pain level had been reduced by 62%. Analyzing the data for individual patients it was found that 15% of the patients did not respond to the treatment, 30% gained total relief, while the remainder of the patients claimed significant relief ranging from 33% to 94%.