The Effect of Sucking Bits of Ice containing mint (mentha) Extract on Nausea and Vomiting Resulted of Chemotherapy in Patients Suffering from Malignant Cancer

Breast cancer is known as the most prevalent and fatal cancer among women. It is used from various methods to cure included surgery, radiography, and chemotherapy. Chemotherapy, as a common curing method, results in various physical and mental side effects. Nausea and vomiting are the most prevalent side effects of chemotherapy. Despite of great improvement in anti nausea and vomiting medications, they are the most expanding side effects ever. On the other hand, complementary and alternative medicine is as a basic and less dangerous method. This study has been accomplished to explore the effect of sucking bits of ice containing mint extract on nausea and vomiting during chemotherapy.
In this clinical trial, 60 patients with breast cancer under chemotherapy were put into two groups of control and ice contained of mint extract in a random way. In testing group, 30 bits of ice containing mint extract in 1 cc during chemotherapy and 30 cc of tap water were given to control group. Nausea was evaluated based on VAS numerical scale and vomiting was estimated according to the number of incidence. The data was analyzed by SPSS software.
The findings signified that the average of nausea in intervention and control group was 1.96 and 2.9; respectively indicating a significant difference (P-value: 0.038), While vomiting numbers were 0.233 and 0.266 in intervention and control group indicating to no significant difference (P-value: 0.65).
According to the study results, ice containing mint extract is of high effect in healing nausea caused by chemotherapy but not on the vomiting.