Acute Effect of Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation on Oxidative Stress and Hematological Parameters in Critical Patients

Aims: To analyze oxidative cellular stress and monitor the evolution of hematological parameters before and after of neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) in critically ill patients. Methods: A controlled and randomized clinical trial, composed of a sample of 19 patients, admitted to the Agamenon Magalhaes Hospital intensive care unit. The patients were divided into two groups: NMES group (n=9), patients that underwent only one NMES in the quadriceps muscle for 20 min, and the other, control group (n=10) that did undergo any therapeutic intervention. Results: In relation to the demographic and clinical variables, the groups were homogeneous at the beginning of the study. For the nitric oxide (NO) analysis, we perceived a reduction, when comparing the before and after analyses, in NO in the stimulated cell (p=0.0188) and non-stimulated cell (p=0.0258) in the NMES group. Also in relation to NO, when comparing the two groups, we observed a significant reduction in the NMES group compared to the control one. For the hematological parameters we did not observe any difference when comparing before and after in the two groups studied. Conclusion: We can conclude that the use of NMES causes a reduction in cellular NO levels, showing the beneficial effects in reducing oxidative stress. With relation to complete blood count, we observed that its application was not able to causes any alterations.