Pain management in early post-operative period in patients with median sternotomy: Cold therapy as non-pharmacological method

23^rd World Nursing and Healthcare Conference

July 10-12, 2017 Berlin, Germany

Gulbanu Zencir

Pamukkale University, Turkey

Scientific Tracks Abstracts: J Nurs Care

Abstract :

Post-operative period of first two days with coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) has severe pain (11-20%). The reasons of postoperative pain in CABG are deep breathing and coughing exercises (DB&CE), moving and rotation in the bed. Pain during DB&CE results in opening the rib cage, pressure on the wound and stress on the sternum lines. DB&CE is important to prevent pulmonary complications. If pain is not controlled during DB&CE, morbidity and mortality risk can be increased. Although the frequently used pharmacological methods can reduce the pain at a certain level, but it leads to side effects (sedation, nausea, constipation, etc.). Also, pharmacological interventions are not enough to control the increase of pain by itself, especially the pain related to deep breathing and the cough. Non-pharmacological methods are easy to use and safe adjuvant therapy with low cost. Effects of the cold therapy are analgesic increase of pain threshold, reduce the use of analgesics, anti-inflammatory, spasm relaxing, increase mobility, and improve rehabilitation. Cold therapy effectively decreases the pain in the activities of coughing and mobilization. It is known that combinational therapy of pharmacological and non-pharmacological methods is more successful in CABG (78%) by randomized controlled trial. Our study showed that cold therapy has positive effects on pain management in the early period of post-cardiac surgery by randomized crossover clinical trial. Thereby application of cold therapy should be encouraged as an alternative treatment for pain management in early post-operative period in patients with median sternotomy.

Biography :

Gulbanu Zencir has worked as a Clinician and Manager Nurse for about 15 years. She did her academic studies from Dokuz Eylul University and PhD from Ege University. She is pursuing her Post-doctoral studies from Pamukkale University, Faculty of Health Science, Nursing department (Fundamentals of Nursing). She has more than 10 published papers in different journals.