Effect of Massage Therapy on Severity of Pain and Outcome of Labor in Primipara

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Labor pain is the most severe pain a woman experience in her life. The severity and duration of labor pain is more, in primiparous women and may lead to undesirable psychological effects, lowered self-confidence and anxiety. New supportive methods like massage therapy could change the labor into a pleasant and desirable experience. Regarding this, the current study was fulfilled to evaluate the effect of massage therapy on severity of labor pain. METHODS: It is a clinical trial on sixty women undergoing delivery in selected hospitals of Tehran. Target population was all the women admitted in Mahdieh and Hedayat hospitals, Tehran, for delivery. The cases were primiparous women with single fetus in the age range of 20 to 34 with cervical dilatation of four centimeters and less and gestational age of 38 to 42 weeks. They were divided into massage therapy and control groups, randomly. Severity of pain was measured in visual analogue scale (VAS) and the questionnaires were filled at the cervical dilatation of 4, 8 and 10 centimeters. Massage therapy was done using effleurage method as a type of Swedish massage technique. The data was analyzed using descriptive (frequency distribution, mean and standard deviation) and analytical (independent t-test and chi square) statistical methods by SPSS software. RESULTS: The results demonstrated that the mean of pain severity at the first stage of labor was significantly different between the experiment group and the control group, at the start of active phase (p= 0.009), end of transitional phase (p= 0.014) and end of the first stage (p=0.01). Also, the duration of the first stage of the labor was different in experiment and control group. CONCLUSIONS: Massage therapy could be introduced as a new useful method during delivery; regarding its supportive role. It is supposed that the results of the study would introduce massage therapy as a non-pharmacological intervention during delivery to reduce the labor pain and causes a decrease in the number of cesarean sections, done to avoid the fear and anxiety, induced by normal vaginal deliveries in young mothers. KEY WORDS: Massage therapy, labor pain relief, primipara