BACKGROUND: OBJECTIVES: SEARCH STRATEGY: The trials were identified from a search of the Specialized Register of the Cochrane Dementia and Cognitive Improvement Group on 10 December 2002 using the terms TENS, transcutaneous, " transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation", and "electric stimulation". The CDCIG Specialized Register contains records from all major health care databases and many ongoing trials databases and is regularly updated. SELECTION CRITERIA: DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: All RCTs that fulfilled the inclusion criteria for the review and for which sufficient data were available were included in this meta-analysis. Two reviewers extracted the data from the included trials. All except one of the included trials used similar outcome measures. Data of the same outcome measures were combined for analysis. MAIN RESULTS: Eight trials were included in the review but only 3 trials could be included in the meta-analysis. Sufficient data to include the other trials in the meta-analysis could not be obtained. From this limited analysis it appears that TENS produced a statistically significant improvement directly after treatment in: delayed recall of 8 words in one trial, face recognition in two trials and motivation in one trial however, no effect of TENS was found on any of the many other neuropsychological and behavioural measures evaluated either directly after TENS treatment or 6 weeks after treatment was completed. REVIEWER'S CONCLUSIONS: Although a number of studies suggest that TENS may produce short lived improvements in some neuropsychological or behavioural aspects of dementia, the limited presentation and availability of data from these studies does not allow definite conclusions on the possible benefits of this intervention. Since most of the currently published studies are well designed, although the numbers of subjects in each study is small, analysis of the complete original data from these and/or future studies may allow more definitive conclusions to be drawn.
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