Clinical Aromatherapy.
Ashley J Farrar, Francisca C Farrar
PMID 33131627WHAT IT FOUND
Case reports described fire, accidental ingestion, skin burns, phototoxicity, oral toxicity and eye injury.
This review presents aromatherapy as complementary symptom management, not as proven treatment.
Key findings
01Essential oils used in aromatherapy are classified as cosmetics, not FDA-regulated drugs for treating or preventing disease.
02Case reports described unsafe storage causing fire and accidental ingestion by a patient.
03Nurse-delivered aromatherapy is framed as symptom management requiring assessment, vital signs, education, outcome measurement, evaluation and documentation.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
It is a narrative review, not a controlled study. Case reports describe what happened to individual patients and cannot show that aromatherapy works or how often harms occur. The paper does not present original methods or controlled outcome results. Much of the plant-source and historical material is descriptive rather than tested in this paper.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude from this paper that aromatherapy treats disease or is proven safe. The paper states essential oils are classified as cosmetics, not drugs, and the case reports describe harm without controlled outcomes.