The Effects of Valerian-Compound Essential Oil on Chronic Neck Pain and Heart Rate Variability – on The Experimental Basis of Nurse of The City Hospital

• Main Authors: Shiou-Shan Fan, 樊修珊
• Other Authors: Cheng-Sheng Hsu Ph.D.
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/46372399775033811947

碩士 === 國立台北護理學院 === 旅遊健康研究所 === 98 === BACKGROUNDS Approximately, one third of the nurses had suffered from the problems of neck pain, which result in difficult in movement and sick leave. Aromatherapy massage is one of treatments to apply for such problems and become more widespread recently. The goal of this study is to assess the effects of valerian-compound essential oil aromatherapy on chronic neck pain of intensive care unit nurses by visual analogue scale (VAS) and heart rate variability (HRV) evaluation. METHODS We studies 64 intensive care unit nurses, who were allocated to two groups, the first group was received massage by using jojoba oil as placebo and the other group was received that of valerian-compound essential oil. Those data were measured followed by VAS and HRV as outcomes. RESULTS There were statistically significant difference in improvement of severity of neck pain rigidity and range of motion on VAS (P＜0.05) by treat with valerian-compound essential oil. However, various measurements of HRV were not significantly improved, but the high frequency was showed boundary difference. CONCLUSIONS Massages with valerian-compound essential oil could reduce severity of neck pain and rigidity subjectively. From results, valerian-compound essential oil of aromatherapy is a simple, convenient and non-invasive method, but need to increase target populations and more sensitive methods to confirm efficacy of that for chronic pain in the future.