The effect of Tecar therapy on pain and tactile sensation of the foot in patients with type II diabetes

Objective: Because of the significant prevalence of diabetes, disability of patients due to the complication of diabetic neuropathy (DN) has been increased. Physiotherapy is one of the treatment methods for DN which can help control the symptoms through modalities such as infrared radiation, electrical stimulation and electromagnetic fields. Tecar therapy is a form of electromagnetic fields. Its effect on the recovery of neuropathic symptoms has not been studied in diabetic patients. Due to the inefficiency of current therapies in controlling the symptoms of DN, this study investigated the effect of Capacitive Tecar therapy on pain and tactile sensation of the feet in type 2 diabetic patients with symptoms of peripheral neuropathy. Methods: This clinical trial was performed as pre-test and post-test with a control group The study samples consisted  of  24  diabetic patients aged 40-78 years  with symtoms of peripheral neuropathy in diabetes center  in the Imam Hosein hospital. We applied the nonrandomized sampling method. The study participants were evaluated at the Biomechanics Laboratory of Rehabilitation school of Shahid Behashti university medical of sciences. The sample (28 individuals) was purposefully selected according to the sample size formula, considering sample missing probability and the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Patients were allocated in the control and experimental group’s randomly.Then; variables of pain and tactile sensation of the feet were evaluated using visual analogue scale and Semmes-Weinstein -monofilament instruments. The patients of experimental groups participated in 10 sessions (4 week; each session: 100 minutes) and received the Capasitive tecar therapy with less than 50% intensity in addition to infrared radiatin; the controls received the same protocol with zero intensity of tecar device. Eventually, parameters were evaluated after last intervention sessions. The normal distribution of data was tested using the Kolmogorov-Sminrnov test; it revealed normality in the distribution of the obtained data. The collected data were analyzed by the Reapeted measure Analysis Of Variance (ANOVA).All statistical analyses were performed in SPSS18. The significance level was set at P<0.05. Results: Basically, there were no significant differences in variables (P>0.05). The results of Rearetd Measure ANOVA showed that there was a significant difference in the mean scores of pain and tactile sensation of  foot in the post-test compared to the pre-test of  two groups.(P<0.001) Indicating that infrared radiation plus Tecar therapy and infrared only reduced pain and improved tactile sensation in diabetic patients. There was also a significant difference in the means of post-test scores of variable pain (P = 0.002) and tactile sensation (P <0.001) between the two groups .The improvement of variables in experimental group was more than control group. Conclusion: The results of this study revealed that Tecar Therapy with infrared radiation can be an appropriate therapeutic program for improving pain and tactile sensation of feet in diabetic patients with symptoms of peripheral neuropathy. Based on these results, it can be recommended using this intervention as an effective method for improvement of   symptoms of peripheral neuropathy related to diabetes along with other physiotherapy modalities.