The Effect of Massage Therapy on Psychological Outcomes in Patients after Cardiac Surgery: A Mini Review

Due to the reduction of side effect costs, nowadays, non-pharmacologicalapproaches such as massage therapy have been put to center attention by therapists.As a structured review, this research was undertaken with the objective of determiningthe effects of massage therapy on the patients’ outcomes (pain, stress, anxiety anddepression) occurring after heart surgeries.Materials and Methods: In this Literature review, Searching was done by using keywordssuch as Massage Therapy, CABG, Patient Outcomes (Pain, Stress, Anxiety andDepression) at Academic databases such as PubMed, CINAHL/Nursing, Science Direct,and Scopus, during the years 2004 to 2014. Next, based on the relevance of thearticles to the subject of our study and the opinions from the research team, relevantand appropriate articles were selected and analyzed contextually.Results: Among 174 papers, 8 fully related papers to the subject of the research wereultimately selected. Massage therapy can lead to a reduction of pain, stress and anxietyin patients, as well as the reduction of need for sedatives in patients in line for heartsurgeries.Conclusion: Massage therapy is a safe and effective therapy in reducing and recoveringpsychological outcomes and pain in patients undergoing heart surgeries. Hence,the use of such non pharmacological approaches can be appealing to Clinical caregivers.

The Effect of Massage Therapy on Psychological Outcomes in Patients after Cardiac Surgery: A Mini Review Keywords:

Massage Therapy , CABG , Patient Outcomes , Stress , Anxiety , Pain , depression