Study of the Effects of Simple Exercise With or Without Physiotherapy on Prevention of Deep Vein Thrombosis Among Postmenopausal Women Requiring Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery

Menopause is one of the risk factors for deep vein thrombosis (DVT) that may increase its likelihood after coronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG). Hence, it is essentially advised to prevent DVT. In this regard, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of simple exercise with and without physiotherapy on DVT prevention in postmenopausal women requiring CABG.

This quasi-experimental study was carried out on 34 patients in Tabriz Shahid Madani hospital from 1 March to the end of July 2019. It is noteworthy that participants were selected based on a random sampling method. The experimental group, namely, the exercise group (n=17) did cardiovascular exercises for 40 minutes the day before the surgery. However, the other group received physiotherapy for each leg for 15 minutes in addition to cardiovascular exercise. Then, DVT diagnosis blood tests, clinical examinations, and Doppler sonography were performed and recorded in all participants’ portfolios. The obtained data were analyzed using SPSS software, and the SPSS tests included Kolmogorov-Smirnov, paired t test, and independent t-test at the significance level of 0.05.

The results of intra-group DVT and blood tests before and after the intervention revealed a statistically significant difference in terms of complete blood count, hemoglobin, hematocrit (P≤0.05). However, no statistically significant differences were reported considering the other variables (P≥0.11). Finally, in the case of inter-group variations, a comparison of the results of the two groups represented no statistically significant difference in any of the studied variables (P≥0.15).

In general, a light exercise session either with or without physiotherapy did not have any positive effects on DVT prevention in postmenopausal women in need of CABG.