Effect of Foot Massage on Incisional Pain and Sleep Pattern among Post Abdominal Surgery Patients

Abstract

abdominal surgery is a trans-abdominal incision. Persistent postoperative pain is a well-known consequence of this surgery. Foot massage appears tobeeffective in reducing incisional pain and improve sleep patterns among post abdominal surgery patients. Aim: To assess the effect of foot massage on incisional pain and sleeppattern among post abdominal surgery patients. Subjects and Methods: Design: Aquasi- experimental pretest-posttest control group research design was used. Setting: The studywasconducted in the surgical adult department at El Demerdash Hospital affiliated to Ain ShamsUniversity. Subject: Non-probability purposive sampling technique was used to select asample of 200 post abdominal surgery patients and were randomly assigned into two groups, 100 for each the experimental and control groups. Three tools were used: (I) a structuredinterview questionnaire, (II) a numerical pain rating scale, and (III) a sleep quality indexscale. Findings: The current study findings showed that during the posttest all post abdominal surgery patients had a mild level of pain in experimental compared to the majorityin the control group had a mild level of pain. During the pretest majority of abdominal surgery patients had poor sleep patterns in both the experimental and control group. duringthe posttest, more than four fifth of the abdominal surgery patients had a good qualityof sleep pattern in the experimental group and poor quality of sleep pattern in the control groupwas among all abdominal surgery patients. The study revealed that there was a differencebetween mean pretest and posttest scores were found statistically significant at p < 0.05level in the experimental group regarding pain level and sleep pattern. Conclusion: Foot massagewas found to be useful in reducing incisional pain and improving the quality of sleep patternsin post- abdominal surgery patients. Recommendations: Post abdominal surgery patientsshould be provided with a simple and applicable strategy to control pain and improve sleeppatterns.