Comparison of the efficacy of aromatherapy and foot spa bath on labor pain in primiparous women: A randomized controlled trial

Labor pain is one of the most severe pains that women experience during the pregnancy period. Inhalation and foot bath are common methods that reduce the pain of labor. The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of warm foot bath with inhalation of rose essence and warm foot bath lonely on pain of labor in primiparous women.

This randomized clncontrolled trial study was carried out on 120 primiparous women who were volunteer for physiologic birth at Shaheed Akbar-Abadi Hospital in Tehran .Conspicuously, the pregnant women were randomly assigned to one of the two intervention groups (warm foot bath with inhalation of rose essence group and warm foot bath group) and control group (routine labor care).Correspondingly, the interventions in both experimental groups were performed for 10 minutes, once at the beginning of the active phase and the second time at the onset of the transition phase. The pain was measured every 30 minutes during the active phase of the labor by using a visual-numerical scale.  After collection and extraction of data, statistical comparison was performed using the SPSS software version 16 and p <0.05 was considered significant. The Chi-square, Fisher exact, ANOVA, Kruskal-Wallis and Scheffe tests were used as statistical methods.

The results at this present study showed that the mean of pain severity were significantly lower in the both interventional groups in comparison to the control group at the beginning of the active phase of labor and delivery (p <0.001). However, the mean of pain severity at the transition phase was lower only in warm foot bath with inhalation of rose essence group in comparison to the both warm foot bath and control groups.

Aromatherapy by inhalation of rose essence and foot bath have the positive effects on reducing the pain of labor.