Effects of Foot Reflexology on Severity of Pain and Opioid Dosage Administered to Patients Undergoing a Discectomy: A Randomized Clinical Trial

The present study aimed to investigate the effects of foot reflexology on the severity of pain and opioid dosage administered to patients undergoing a discectomy.

The present randomized clinical trial (concurrent parallel) was conducted including two experimental groups. In general, 60 patients were selected from Imam Reza and Shohada hospitals of Tabriz based on convenience sampling and then randomly assigned to the intervention (n=30) and control (n=30) groups based on randomly permuted blocks. Four hours after the surgery and the last dosage of pethidine, patients in the intervention group received massaging of both feet 20 minutes per day for 2 days while those in the control group received no intervention. The data were collected using a demographics and visual analogue scale (VAS) checklist and then were statistically analyzed using chi-square, Fisher exact test, and the independent t-test in SPSS-21 at the 0.05 level of significance.

After the intervention, the severity of pain significantly reduced in the intervention group (P<0.001) but it did not change in the control group (P>0.410). The results indicated no significant difference between the two groups in pre-intervention pethidine dosage (P>0.490). After the intervention, pethidine dosage significantly decreased in the intervention group on all days (P<0.001), but no significant change was observed in the control group (P>0.499).

Considering the positive effects of foot reflexology on the severity of pain and reduced dosage of the required opioids for pain control, this technique is recommended to be used as a perfect complementary therapy, along with other treatments to reduce postoperative pain in patients undergoing a discectomy.