Effect of changes in Skin Thickness on pain-relief Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS)

Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS) suppresses chronic pain by stimulating deep nerves near the fascia from electrodes on the skin's surface. TENS has different effects on patients of different ages due to the variation of the thickness of skin layers when one becomes older.In this paper, we aim to optimize the stimulation effectiveness of TENS for patients of different ages through investigation of TENS stimulations of three different skin types categorized by age, Young, Old, and Older. In this investigation, the skin layer (stratum corneum, epidermis layer, dermis layer) in each model was created, and the thickness was varied. The effect of sin wave stimulation at 1 Hz, 100 Hz, and 10 kHz on the nerve stimulation effect near the fascia was examined.It is found that besides the well-known effect of stratum corneum, the thickness of the dermis layer significantly affects the stimulating effect. In addition, by using a lumped circuit model, it is showed that the change in the current path causes a mitigation in the stimulation effect in the dermis layer.