Pain improvement after healing touch and massage in breast cancer: An observational retrospective study

Abstract

Background: Healing Touch (HT) and Oncology Massage (OM) are nonphar-macologic pain interventions, yet a comparative effectiveness study has not been conducted for pain in breast cancer. Purpose: This breast cancer subgroup analysis compared the effectiveness of HT vs. OM on pain. Setting: The research occurred at an outpatient setting at an academic hy-brid, multi-site, community-based cancer institute and Department of Supportive Oncology across four regional locations. Participants: Breast cancer outpatients along the cancer continuum who experi-enced routine clinical, nonexperimentally manipulated HT or OM. Research Design: The study was an observational, retrospective, comparative effectiveness post hoc subanalysis of a larger dataset. Patients reporting pain < 2 were excluded. Pre-and posttherapy pain scores and differences were calculated. Logistic regression modeled posttherapy pain by modality, adjusting for prether-apy pain. The proportions experiencing ≥ 2-point (clinically significant) pain reduction were compared with chi-square tests. Intervention: The study focused on the first session of either HT or OM. Main Outcome Measures: Pre-and post-therapy pain (range: 0 = no pain to 10 = worst possible pain). Results: A total of 407 patients reported pre-and posttherapy pain scores, com-prised of 233 (57.3%) who received HT and 174 (42.8%) who received OM. Pretherapy mean pain was higher in HT (M=5.1, ± 2.3) than OM (M=4.3, ± 2.1) (p