Efficiency of Reflexive Massage on the Anxiety and Pain Intensity of The Patients with Traumatic Brain Injury

The emergence of chronic diseases such as traumatic brain injuries brings about emotional and psychological damages in the patients. Therefore, the present study was conducted with the purpose of investigating the effectiveness of reflexive massage on the anxiety and pain intensity of the patients with traumatic brain injury.

The present study was quasi-experimental with pretest, posttest, control group and two-month follow-up design. The statistical population of the present study included the patients with traumatic brain injury who attended Ayatollah Kashani Esfahani Hospital in the third quarter of 2019. 30 patients with traumatic brain injury were selected through purposive sampling method and they were randomly accommodated into experimental and control groups (15patients in the experimental group and 15 in the control group). The experimental group received eight sessions of reflexive massage during a month. 3 patients from the experimental group and 2 patients from the control group quitted taking part in the study after starting the intervention. The applied questionnaires in this study included Beck et.al, 1988) and pain perception (Melzack, 1997). The data from the study were analyzed through repeated measurement ANOVA method.

The results showed that reflexive massage has significant effect on the anxiety and pain intensity of the patients with traumatic brain injury (P<0.001) in a way that this method led to the decrease of anxiety and pain intensity of the patients with traumatic brain injury.

According to the findings of the present study it can be stated that reflexive massage can be an efficient method to decrease anxiety and pain intensity of the patients with traumatic brain injury