The effect of touch on the arterial blood oxygen saturation in agitated patients undergoing mechanical ventilation

Patients under mechanical ventilation suffer agitation and lack of forbearance due to different reasons, which bring about changes in arterial oxygen saturation. Thus medicinal treatments are often used, which exact various complications. A touch could be an influential physiologic, non-medicinal stimulus in this procedure. Therefore this study conducted to determine the effect of touch on the level of arterial oxygen saturation in agitated patients under mechanical ventilation. The present study is an Interventional study of an after-and-before design, which was conducted on 35 patients under mechanical ventilation, who were hospitalized in the intensive care unit (ICU). These patients aged from 35 to 60. Sampling was carried out based on simple sampling of patients hospitalized in general ICU at Day Hospital, Tehran. In the way that in the intervention group, the nurse touched the patient while standing by him/her. Then the level of arterial blood oxygen saturation was measured by pulse oximeter before and after intervention. The achieved results were assessed by using software SPSS-16 and statistical tests and a significant level of less than 0.05 was accepted. According to the data analyzing, the difference of the changes in the arterial oxygen saturation level was significant before and after intervention (along with touch) (p< 0.001) but while there wasn’t any touch, this difference wasn’t significant (p= 0.071 Touch improves the respiratory status and raises the level of arterial oxygen saturation in patients under mechanical ventilation. Thus it is recommended non- medicinal measures such as touch be taken in order to improve the respiratory status of the patients under mechanical ventilation.