Comparison of parental satisfaction with post tonsillectomy pain management with two methods of acupressure and pharmacological analgesics in children: A randomized, single-blind, placebo-controlled trial study

Abstract Background: Tonsillectomy is one of usual surgeries in children population worldwide. One of the common complication after this surgery is pain and control of it is very imperative. There are many pain control way such as pharmacologic treatments and complementary treatment. One of acceptable pain control in children is acupressure. Unfortunately side effects of pharmacologic treatments, the use of supplementary and complementary treatments for pain relief such as acupressure is recommended0 It is necessary to use minimally invasive and lowest complication in children. Objective: The present study aim to survey the comparison effect of acupressure with analgesic drugs on the pain and parental satisfaction after tonsillectomy in children aged 5 to 12 years old. Method: In this study 144 children aged 5-12 years old were allocated into one of three groups of control, interventions and placebo. In the intervention group, children receive acupressure plus analgesic treatment as routine and in the placebo group, children receive sham acupressure plus analgesic treatment. In the control group just analgesic treatment provided. The acupressure was performed at three session after operation. Before and after each session amount of pain and parent satisfaction was measured. Data gathered were analyzed by SPSS 16 software with descriptive and non-parametric inferential statistical tests. Results: The result of study show that the amount of pain reduction and parent satisfaction was a statistically significant at three session after operation in acupressure group (P = 00002). Furthermore, it was found that amount of pain in the control group and the placebo group did not statistically significant (respectively: P = 0.546, P = 00332). Conclusion: The results indicated that acupressure technique is very useful on pain reduction after tonsillectomy and use of acupressure along with pharmacological drugs, will decrease the amount of analgesic requirement in children and will improve parental satisfaction with pain control of their children after operation. Acupressure is a low-cost and useful technique and it does not have side effects.

Keywords: Acupressure, Postoperative pain, Children, Tonsillectomy, Complementary medicine.