Peripheral nerve stimulation in the management of dysmenorrhea

J B Walker, Judith Boas Walker, R L Katz, Ronald L. Katz
Pain · 1981 · vol. 11(3) , pp. 355–361 · doi:10.1016/0304-3959(81)90635-7 · PMID:6977125 · W2119769772
article OA: closed CC0
View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

Electrical stimulation of peripheral nerves provides analgesia for dysmenorrhea, with permanent relief observed after repeated treatments and in long-term follow-up studies.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

Electrical stimulation of radial, median, and saphenous nerves produces analgesia in patients with dysmenorrhea, whereas control stimulation in adjacent points does not. Pain relief is not reversed by naloxone, and patients experience permanent analgesia after 10 consecutive daily treatments. A follow-up of patients treated for surgically documented gynecological pain due to endometriosis shows them to be pain-free 5 years after cessation of treatment, as measured by verbal report, attendance at work, and analgesic abstinence. To our knowledge this represents the first such long-term follow-up in the clinical pain literature, and suggests that peripheral nerve stimulation may be useful in the treatment of dysmenorrhea.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

mesh:D004412mesh:D004715endometriosisdysmenorrhea

MeSH descriptors

Analgesia Dysmenorrhea Electric Stimulation Therapy Peripheral Nerves Analgesia Dysmenorrhea Dysmenorrhea Endometriosis Endometriosis Female Follow-Up Studies Humans Naloxone Naloxone Peripheral Nerves

Citation neighborhood (2-hop)

Papers in the corpus that this work cites (lower rings, blue) and that cite this one (upper rings, green). Dot size scales with the paper's in-corpus citation count — bigger dot = more influential within the endo/adeno field. Click a dot to open that paper. Outer rings show 2-hop neighbours — papers reached through the immediate citers/citees. [ collapse to 1-hop ]

References (23)

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-06-04T01:30:01.192114+00:00
openalex
last seen: 2026-06-04T00:00:01.174412+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-05-13T22:10:06.101301+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK