The effectiveness of massage and feet elevation on physiological edema of pregnancy: a comparison

Objective (s): Physiological edema of pregnancy is a common finding in pregnancy and there are several interventions to control it. As such the feet elevation is one of the most common approaches. However, this approach may cause some limitations. Thus, the use of massage as a new therapy is increasing. The present study was performed to compare the effectiveness of massage and feet elevation on physiological edema of pregnancy. In this study, 180 healthy pregnant women non-randomly assigned to 3 groups: massage group, feet elevation group and control group. Massage group received 20 minutes feet massage and the feet elevation group received feet elevation for 20 minutes. The study was performed during 5 days. Edema was measured before and after interventions and was compared among three groups. There were significant differences among three groups in terms of the mean rate of change of the circumferences. However, this change was greater for the massage group. The results indicated that compared with feet elevation, massage has greater impact on pregnancy edema.