EFFECT OF DRY HEAT APPLICATION ON POST EPISIOTOMY PAIN RELIEF IN EARLY POSTPARTUM PERIOD AMONG WOMEN

Abstract

The pain may distract the mother from her physical and emotional recovery. Timely and effective management of each pain is important for a successful postpartum period, breastfeeding and mother-infant dyad. Know strategies, such as dry heat application and moist heat application among others, are beneficial in management of aches and pains after episiotomy or births. Nevertheless, there is little knowledge comparing these methods. The study site was the postnatal ward of a secondary healthcare hospital located in district Tharparkar, Sindh, Pakistan. A total of 1094 postpartum mothers with episiotomies were randomly assigned to two groups, 547 to moist heat and 547 to dry heat. Primary pain evaluation was done using Visual Analog Scale, VAS before and after procedures done twice everyday for two consecutive days. The data collected wascomputed and analyzed using the SPSS software while statistical significance was set at p0.05 levels. By the second day, the average VAS score in the dry heat group went down from 6.1 to 2.5 whereas that of moist heat group went down from 6.2 to 3.8 (p < 0.001). In addition, twice as many of those in the dry heat group, or 65%, reported moderately more effective pain relief, which is VAS ≤3 by day 2, compared to 45% in the moist heat group. In the early postpartum period dry heat therapy appears to be better than moist heat therapy in treating post episiotomy pain. As painful complaints were significantly reduced together with a high percentage of women who achieved effective pain relief dry heat should be regarded as a first choice non-pharmacological method for treating postpartum pain.