CN98 - The health gains of therapeutic touch in cancer patients with pain: A literature review

Background

Cancer patients experience pain. This pain management requires targeted, dynamic, and individual management that includes pharmacological and non-pharmacological therapies approach. Therapeutic touch is gaining more attention in management of pain in patients. Therefore. it is essential to understand the benefits of therapeutic touch in cancer patients in clinical practice. Objectives: To identify health gains of the therapeutic touch in the management of pain in people with cancer.

Methods

Integrative review of the literature according with methodology of Whitemoure and Knafl. Was also used the PI[C]O methodology for formulation of the research question which was “What are the health gains of the therapeutic touch in pain management in people with cancer?”. The search was carried out in online databases via EBSCOhost, as following: MEDLINE, CINAHL and Academic Search Complete. The search was performed on April 4, 2023. The search strategy was used MeSH terms “Neoplasms”, “Cancer”, “Pain”, “Therapeutic Touch”, “Healing touch” and the Boolean operators “AND” and “OR”. The inclusion criteria were quantitative studies; participants aged 18 or over years; studies in the oncology context, articles with a time limit of the last 5 years (between April 1, 2018 and April 31, 2023); articles available in with full text and in Portuguese, English or Spanish language. All this selection process was carried out by two independent reviewers and if there was any type of disagreement, a third reviewer would assist in the selection process.

Results

In the initial process were identified 31 articles, review yielded five articles after the selection process and the application of the inclusion criteria. The benefits are mainly in reducing pain score, enhanced pain management, necessity of less pain killers, alleviate discomfort related with pain, in addition it will help improve overall well-being and quality of life for cancer patients.

Conclusions

The review demonstrates that the vast majority of scientific evidence found demonstrate the benefits of therapeutic touch in cancer patients that experience pain, and it can be considered a complementary therapy in pain management.

Clinical trial identification

Editorial acknowledgement

Legal entity responsible for the study

H. Martins.

Funding

Has not received any funding.

Disclosure

All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.