Home TENS unit for pain ยท St. Louis
A home TENS unit puts the pain-calming tingle in your hands between visits.
Your home TENS unit is a pocket stimulator, run on batteries, with adhesive pads that bring the clinic’s pain-lowering tingle home with you. At painstl.com the mode, session length and frequency come from your physician’s order.
What exactly is it?
A pocket-sized, battery-powered device with adhesive pads, set up and explained for you in the clinic.
Why would it be part of your plan?
When pain flares between visits, the unit turns the pain signal down so you can keep moving and keep doing your exercises. For patients working to cut back on pain medicine, it is one more tool that is not a pill. See our position on opioid stewardship.
What a good fit feels like
Under the pads: a firm, comfortable buzz that never hurts.
Daily use and care
Pads go on clean, dry skin surrounding the sore spot, spaced an inch or more apart. Store them on their plastic sheet and swap in fresh ones when they lose their grip. Stop using it and call if you see redness or a burn under a pad, feel faint, or notice your pulse racing.
Warning signs that mean you call
- Keep pads off broken skin, the eyes, the chest and the front of the neck
- Do not use it while you drive, operate machinery, sleep, bathe or shower
- Pacemakers, implanted stimulators and pregnancy rule it out unless your physician has cleared it
Every item is fitted on you in the clinic. We demonstrate wearing it, using it and removing it, hand you written instructions, and have you do it solo before leaving. Pain, a poor fit or a broken part means a call to (314) 886-5620.
How much time to plan for
As your physician ordered.
What to remember
- Clean, dry skin and an inch or more between pads.
- Not in the car, in bed or in water.
- A pad leaving red or burned skin: stop and call.
Last step. Show us you have it: Right here in the clinic, demonstrate how you position the pads, power it up and select the mode. Unsure about any step? We run through it with you again next time.
Related reading
- The painstl.com physiotherapy program, every station and test
- TENS in the clinic
- Opioid stewardship
- Exercise bands, another device
- Back brace, another device
- Hinged knee brace, another device
- Wrist brace, another device
Ask whether this belongs in your plan
A physician reviews your history and your procedures first, then writes the orders. Nothing is added without a reason in your chart.
4479 Woodson Rd, Suite 401
St. Louis, MO 63134
Next to St. Louis Lambert International Airport, off I-70 at Woodson Road.