The Effect of Implementing Nursing Care Package on the Incidence of Pulmonary Atelectasis in Patients after open Heart Surgery

Pulmonary atelectasis is one of the major problems in most chest surgeries, especially open heart surgery. This study was performed to investigate the effect of standard nursing care package (appropriate bed height, breathing exercises and postural drainage) on the severity of atelectasis in patients after open heart surgery.

In the present randomized clinical trial, 60 eligible patients who had open heart surgery were selected by available sampling method and then randomly divided into four blocks of intervention (30 patients) and control (30 patients). They got. In the control group, routine care was performed in the ward and for the intervention group. Data collection tools, data sheet and chest radiography were used to diagnose atelectasis.

The results showed that the intervention and control groups did not differ significantly in terms of demographic characteristics. The results also showed that although the incidence of atelectasis was lower in the intervention group than the control group, but this difference was not statistically significant (P> 0.05).

Due to the lack of effect of care package on reducing the incidence of atelectasis, it is suggested that due to the temporal and spatial limitations of this study, wider studies should be performed in other centers and more patients.