The Effect of Auriculotherapy on the Stress in Patients Candidate for Coronary Angiography in Selected Aja Hospital

Although angiography is applied as a standard method for the diagnosis of coronary heart disease, it is a stressful experience for patients. Medication therapy for mitigating the pre-operation stress includes side effects.

The present study aimed to determine the effect of auriculotherapy on the level of stress before coronary angiography in male patients hospitalized in the selected Aja hospital in Tehran.

This single-blinded clinical trial study was performed on 94 male patients undergoing coronary angiography in 2019. Patients were selected by convenience sampling and divided into intervention and control groups by random sampling method The DASS_21 Stress, Anxiety and Depression questionnaire were used to measure stress. The DASS-21 questionnaire subscale was completed by patients in both intervention and control groups. Auriculotherapy was performed by the researcher 60 minutes before angiography. Stress levels were measured again in both groups ten minutes after the intervention, In the control group, ear massage was performed on false points. In the present study, SPSS-21 was used for data analysis, and the Significance level was considered less than 0.05. (P<0.05).

There was no significant difference between groups before and after the intervention (P=0.197). Patients’ stress after auriculotherapy in the intervention group (2.98 ± 0.37) was significantly lower than that before auriculotherapy (4.17 ± 0.44) (P = 0.001); Stress was not significantly different in the control group (3.32 ± 0.40) before and after the intervention (3.0 ± 15.40) (P= 0.373). But the level of stress in the intervention group after auriculotherapy was insignificantly reduced compared to the control group (P= 0.790). Discussion and

The results showed that auriculotherapy can mitigate stress in patients undergoing angiography; therefore, this complementary method can be used to mitigate stress in these patients. Further studies with more sample size are recommended.