THE EFFECT OF THERAPEUTIC TOUCH ON PAIN RELIEF IN PATIENTS WITH CANCER

Pain is a common and devastating syndrome of cancer affecting patients’ lives
probably even more than the cancer itself. There are several studies which have assessed the efficacy
of non-pharmacological interventions on cancer pain relief; however, the results have been
inconsistent. One of the non-pharmacological interventions is healing touch. Therefore, the purpose of
the present study was whether therapeutic touch can have an effect on cancer pain relief, and whether
it is a safe technique or it has side effects
Materials & Methods: A systematic literature review was performed to answer the above questions.
The literature search was conducted on Ovid, Elsevier, PubMed, Google scholar, and CINAHL
databases between 1980 and 2013. 503 research articles were found. These articles were reviewed and
after reading the abstracts, 12 relevant articles were selected. From among these articles the ones
containing clinical trial, quasi experimental, case-control and cohort studies were selected (N=6).
Results: Two clinical trials, one quasi experimental, two cohort and one case-control study were found
which was performed on 415 patients with cancer.
Conclusion: Therapeutic touch seems to be helpful in controlling pain in patients with cancer. The
studies did not report any side effects for therapeutic touch; therefore, this technique seems to be safe