Effect of Foot Reflexology on Meconium Passage in Healthy Infants

In the infants, meconium passage is an important phenomenon in the first days of life and acceleration its excretion can prevent complications. Foot reflexology is one of complementary therapies that can help to improve health status. The purpose of this study was to determine effect of foot reflexology on meconium passage in healthy infants.
In this controlled clinical trial, 60 infants with written informed consent from parents were selected and divided randomly into three experiment, sham and control groups. Reflexology was performed for experiment group on the intestines and colon area for 30 minutes 4 times and reflexology was carried out for sham group on the neutral area for the same duration. Data collected using demographic form and a researcher-made checklist. Data were analyzed using one-way and repeated measure ANOVA tests by spss-14.5.
In the experiment group, time of first meconium passage with mean of 6.95±1.78 was shorter than sham (9.17±1.80) and control (9.55±1.31) groups (p=0.001) and frequency of meconium passages in the first day of life was more than two groups (1.90±0.64, 1.30±0.57 and 1.60±0.68 in the experiment, sham and control groups respectively p=0.009). But there were no significant differences between groups in mean frequency of meconium passages in second, third and fourth days (p>0.05). Feeding intolerance in the infants of control group was more than another two groups (p=0.04).
The results showed positive effects of foot reflexology on improvement first time and frequency of meconium passage and feeding tolerance in healthy infants. Therefore this non-pharmacological method should be recommended as a supplement treatment in the healthy infants.