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-pharmacological approaches such as massage therapy have been put to center attention by therapists. As a structured review, this research was undertaken with the objective of determining the effects of massage therapy on the patients’ outcomes (pain, stress, anxiety and depression) occurring after heart surgeries. In this Literature review, Searching was done by using keywords such as Massage Therapy, CABG, Patient Outcomes (Pain, Stress, Anxiety and Depression) at Academic databases such as PubMed, CINAHL/Nursing, Science Direct, and Scopus, during the years 2004 to 2014. Next, based on the relevance of the articles to the subject of our study and the opinions from the research team, relevant and appropriate articles were selected and analyzed contextually. Among 174 papers, 8 fully related papers to the subject of the research were ultimately selected. Massage therapy can lead to a reduction of pain, stress and anxiety in patients, as well as the reduction of need for sedatives in patients in line for heart surgeries. Massage therapy is a safe and effective therapy in reducing and recovering psychological outcomes and pain in patients undergoing heart surgeries. Hence, the use of such non pharmacological approaches can be appealing to Clinical caregivers.