BACKGROUND: Pain is a frequent sensation in postoperative of cardiac surgery, being considered responsible for some respiratory complications in this period. TENS (transcutaneous eletrical nerve stimulation) is an electric stimulator, used in the Physical Therapy treatment, with clinical objective to provoke symptomatic relief of pain. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to verify the effectiveness of TENS in the reduction of the pain levels, through the visual analogue scale (VAS), in the first day of postoperative (1DPO) of Cardiac Surgeries. MATERIAL AND METHODS: 20 patients, placed in two groups, had participated of the sample. In the group A (n = 10) the individuals had been submitted to the electrostimulation with TENS, and in group B (n = 10) submitted only to a placebo treatment. Before the electrostimulation, all the individuals had chosen a representative number of the intensity of its pain in VAS, what the accomplishment was happened again after TENS treatment and placebo. The difference enters the values in VAS for both the groups was statistically analyzed. RESULTS: In the evaluation of the variation painful sensation it enters the groups the patients of the group A had presented an average reduction of 1.3 +/- 1.2, and the patients of group B of 1.4 +/- 0.8. However statistically significant difference does not exist between the two groups in the reduction of pain (p = 0.596). CONCLUSION: In our study, we did not observe statistically significant difference in the relief of the pain complaint for patients in 1 day of postoperative, submitted to the application of TENS when compared with the stimulation placebo.

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