The effect of cold compressor on the comfort of patients during removal of the chest tube drainage after cardiac surgery

Patients report painful and unpleasant experiences when removing chest tube. The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of cold compresses before removing the chest drainage tube on the comfort of patients after cardiac surgery.
This is a randomized clinical trial with 120 patients undergoing cardiac surgery in Farshchian Hospital in Hamadan. Patients were randomly divided into 3 intervention, placebo and control groups. Cold compression and placebo were placed around tubes for 20 minutes before removing the chest tubes. The patient's comfort level was measured using the visual analog scale (VAS) before, immediately after and 5 minutes after removal of the chest tube. Data analysis was done by SPSS software version 16 and Chi-square, ANOVA.
There was no significant difference between demographic data in the studied groups. However, the average comfort score before, immediately after and 5 minutes after removing chest tube was significantly different in the groups (P = .000). The mean systolic and diastolic pressure in the three groups did not differ significantly in all three stages. However, the mean heart rate immediately after removal of the tube, heart rate was significantly higher in the control group(p = 0.04).
The results showed that the use of cold compresses around the chest tube before to the removal of tubes in patients undergoing heart surgery increases the comfort of the patients.