Effect of Ear Acupressure on Anxiety and Severity of Nausea in Patients Candidate for Appendectomy: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Anxiety and nausea are common and distressing symptoms that patients experience before appendectomy. The aim of this study was to examine the effect of ear acupressure on anxiety and severity of nausea in patients candidate for appendectomy.
This is a single-blind clinical trial of three groups that was conducted on 72 inpatients candidate for appendectomy in surgical ward. The samples were selected using convenience sampling and randomly divided into three groups: intervention, placebo and control. The intervention group patients underwent acupressure at true points and placebo group at sham points for 15 minutes. Anxiety and severity of nasea were evaluated before and minutes 15 and 30 after the intervention in the three groups. The data were analyzed by chi-Square, Kruskal-Wallis, repeated measures ANOVA, one-way ANOVA and Friedman test.
Acupressure at true point caused a significant reduction in the mean score of anxiety at minutes 15 (p According to the results of this study, using acupressure at right points can decrease anxiety in patients candidate for appendectomy, but it has no clinical effect on their severity of nausea.