Twenty-three patients who had an established non-union of a long bone
were entered into a prospective, double-blind trial in which electrical
capacitive coupling was used for treatment. Twenty-one patients completed
the study: ten who were actively managed and eleven who were managed with a
placebo unit. The non-union healed in six of the ten patients who had been
managed actively but in none of the patients who had been managed with the
placebo unit. This difference in the rates of healing between the actively
managed and the placebo groups is highly significant (p = 0.004).