Diathermia

In medicine, diathermia or diathermy is usage of electrically induced heat in therapeutic purposes. It is commonly used to cause muscle relaxation. It is also a method of heating tissue electromagnetically or ultrasonically for therapeutic purposes in medicine. In surgery, it is used as a method of electrocauterization, for example to control bleeding or cut through tissues.

"Electric diathermy" (not to be confused with therapeutic ultrasound) may be loosely called "diathermy," but it does not use dielectric heating but rather high frequency alternating electric or magnetic fields, sometimes with no electrode or device contact to the skin, to induce gentle deep tissue heating by induction or dipole rotation. If precautions are followed no tissue is ordinarily damaged. It is generally used in physical therapy biomedical applications.