The Effect of Head-Neck And Hand Massage on Spinal Headache After Cesarean Section: Randomized Clinical Trial

Caesarean section has been introduced as a method protecting the life of method for and infant and Spinal anesthesia is the most common anesthetic technique used in cesarean section. The rate of headache after spinal anesthesia has been reported from 0.1% to 36% in several studies. Headaches caused after spinal anesthesia are stressful for mothers and prevent desired caring of mothers from infant and lactation. Hence, the current research was conducted to evaluate the impact of head-neck and hand massage on headache severity after spinal anesthesia in women underwent cesarean delivery. The present study is a randomized controlled clinical trial in which 60 patients undergoing cesarean section referring to Tabriz Azad University of Medical Sciences were randomly divided into two intervention groups (massage group on face-neck pressure and massage group. On the pressure points of the hands) and the control group. In the first and second group, massage was performed 3 times a day for 15 minutes over 2 consecutive days on compression points of the head and neck. the following tools were used to collect the data demographic questionnaire and Visual Analogue Scale (VAS). To analyze the data, in addition to descriptive statistics, Repeated Measures ANOVA was used to compare the duplicate data (mean pain severity) in each of the groups and ANOVA test was used to compare the mean pain severity among three groups (inter-group comparisons). Data were analyzed using SPSS 22 software at a significance level of 0.05. The results of this study showes that mean headache severity in the control group was higher than that in the head-neck massage group and the hand massage group, and comparison of intervention groups showed that head-neck massage group had significantly lower headache severity compared to hand massage group and control group. Conclusion: findings of this research suggest that massage therapy affects the severity of headache caused by spinal anesthesia in patients underwent cesarean section surgery.