Wave of the Future : Current State of Therapy incorporates electrical stimulation

James Worthy used it to keep the swelling down in his ankle during the NBA playoffs. It helped Dodger catcher Mike Scioscia avoid shoulder surgery and soothed a painful injury endured by former King star Marcel Dionne when nothing else seemed to work.

It’s the latest wave in physical therapy: H-wave electrical stimulation.

Although it has been in use since the early 1980s, the little box that sends electrical waves through the joints and muscles of the injured has caught the public’s attention through its highly publicized use during sporting events--such as the recent NBA finals between the Lakers and Chicago Bulls, when Worthy used one on his ankle while on the bench.

Basically, the box sends an electric current through the injured area, contracting the affected muscle to keep it moving, and maintaining blood flow, thus helping reduce swelling and stiffness.

Clive Brewster, director of physical therapy at the Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic Clinic in Inglewood, explained, “It decreases inflammation and gets rid of swelling.”

Dodger therapist Pat Screnar, who has helped a number of players through career-threatening injuries, said: “We’ve used it for a number of years. We use it for just about anything. We find it useful, it seems to do a good job for swelling of any kind.”

Pitcher Orel Hershiser, who has used it infrequently during his year-long rehabilitation from shoulder surgery, said: “It’s part of all the different things we do. You have to say it’s helpful or we wouldn’t use it.”

The device was pioneered by Huntington Beach inventor Gene Shapiro and partner Jim Heaney in the late 1970s and brought to market in 1981. The breakthrough, Shapiro said, occurred when he took it to Kerlan-Jobe and Brewster agreed to try it, testing it on 20 patients with soft-muscle injuries.

“When he first had it, he didn’t know what it did,” Brewster recalled. “He was one of the few salesmen who didn’t try to (mislead) me, so we used it and it worked.”

Shapiro, 57, said that he and Heaney didn’t invent the H-wave, but were the first to apply it medically.

“It’s the only new wave form on the market in the last 25 years,” Shapiro said.

In layman’s terms, “It fires muscle on both ends so you get motor contraction.”

Shapiro said the device has been used to help save limbs from amputation, and to take pain away from cancer sufferers with tumors without the use of painkillers.

“(Other forms of electrical stimulation) treat the signal of the pain before it goes to the brain,” Shapiro said. “We treat the source of the pain. The body identifies with our signal--it’s a natural wave form.

“It didn’t have much credibility (at first) because it was so different. Kerlan-Jobe actually put me in business. Recognition is coming now because we’re working with so many patients. We’ve worked on some of the top athletes in the world and it’s been very effective. It’s a very unique piece of equipment.”