ABSTRACT
Following FDA approval of pulsed electromagnetic field (EMF) therapies for nonunion bone fractures in 1979, evidence supporting the effectiveness of these treatments for a variety of orthopedic conditions has accumulated at an impressive rate (1). Double-blind placebo controlled trials have demonstrated that weak, pulsed EMFs can alleviate the pain and disability associated with osteoarthritis and musculoskeletal pain (2). The serendipitous discovery that diagnostic transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) had mood altering effects in some patients (3) led to further research in this area. Shealy and co-workers confirmed a decrease in serotonin in depressed patients and demonstrated that transcranial electrical stimulation could improve depression and restore serotonin levels to normal (4). More recently it has been shown that repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) using 10 to 20 Hz magnetic fields targeted to the left prefrontal cortex can alleviate drug resistant depression (5). Similar results have been obtained with vagal nerve stimulation (6) and deep brain stimulation of the ventrointermediate nucleus of the thalamus (7).
