The Comparison of Two Types of Relaxation Techniques on Postoperative State Anxiety in Candidates for The Mastectomy Surgery: A Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial.
Zohreh Parsa Yekta, Fatemeh Sadeghian, Taraneh Taghavi Larijani and 1 others
PMID 28097179WHAT IT FOUND
Teaching mastectomy patients rhythmic breathing or Benson relaxation before surgery lowered postoperative anxiety scores compared with no relaxation.
The two techniques performed similarly, and neither was clearly better for cognitive or physical symptoms of anxiety.
Key findings
01Both relaxation groups showed significant reductions in postoperative anxiety, while the control group did not.
02The two relaxation techniques did not differ significantly in postoperative anxiety.
03Postoperative cognitive anxiety differed between the relaxation groups and control, but rhythmic breathing versus Benson was not significant.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
Patients were selected by convenient sampling. Allocation was not concurrent: control patients were recruited in the first two months, and intervention patients were recruited in the second two months. Training was only one day, while the paper notes relaxation education may need four to sixteen weeks. The authors noted the interval between teaching and postoperative measurement was too long, and that no interventions were performed before the surgery. Rhythmic breathing could not be performed after surgery because of pain and restricted range of motion. The paper reports conflicting Benson-versus-control comparisons: one was not significant (P=0.051) and one was significant (P=0.049). No similar study was available for comparison, according to the authors.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that rhythmic breathing is better than Benson relaxation for postoperative anxiety. The two relaxation groups did not differ significantly (P=0.321), and the suggestion of a greater somatic effect was not supported by a significant between-technique result.