Meta-Analysis of the Effectiveness on Foot-Reflexo-Massage for Cancer Patients

Purpose: This study was performed to analyze the characteristics and effect sizes of intervention studies on foot-reflexo-massage applied to cancer patients. Methods: For meta-analysis, a total of 159 studies were retrieved from search engines such as RISS, nanet, KISS, richis and KoreaMed. 16 studies published from 1990 to 2010 were selected based on the inclusion criteria. The data were analyzed with the RevMan 5.0 program of Cochrane library. Results: 1) The mean score of 1 implement time on foot-reflexo-massage was 25.62 minutes, the average number of days was 4.12 days, and the total number of average intervention frequency was 4.25 times. 2) Intervention studies on foot-reflexo-massage included 9 studies on anxiety (56.3%), 7 for pain (43.8%), 5 for BP/pulse (31.3%), 5 for fatigue (31.3%), 3 for nausea/vomiting (18.8%), 3 for sleep satisfaction (18.8%), and 2 for depression (12.5%). 3) The effect sizes of the intervention studies that showed higher effect size were in order, anxiety (d= -1.76), fatigue (d= -1.43), depression (d= -1.03), nausea and vomiting (d= -0.83), pain (d= -0.77), pulse rate (d= -0.61), blood pressure (d= -0.55), and sleep satisfaction (d=0.43). Conclusion: This study suggests that foot-reflexo-massage can increase sleep satisfaction, whereas decreasing blood pressure, pulse rate, anxiety, fatigue, depression, nausea, vomiting and pain.