Objectives: Cardiovascular diseases, especially coronary artery diseases, result in sleep disturbance. Myocardial muscle oxygen demand rises in sleep disturbance. Also, the possibility of cardiovascular risks such as re-infarction and dysrhythmias increases. As a result, removing sleep disorders is very important. The current study aimed at assessing the effect of foot reflexology massage and foot bath methods on sleep quality of the patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) through a comparative study.
Methods:The current semi-experimental study was conducted on 3 groups of patients with ACS admitted to coronary care units (CCUs) of Baqiyatallah (AJ) hospital of Tehran, Iran. Samples of the study included 35 patients for each group (105 patients in all the groups) selected among the available hospitals and divided into 3 groups (foot reflexology massage, foot bath, and control) through random allocation. According to the related program, patients of the intervention groups were under intervention for 2 nights from the 2nd night of hospitalization and sleep quality was assessed through Verran and Snyder-Halpern (VSH) subjective sleep quality questionnaire before and after the intervention. Then, data analysis was done through SPSS version21 by descriptive and inferential statistics. Results: There was no significant statistical difference among the 3 groups regarding sleep disturbance and supplementary sleep after interventions (P > 0.05), but there was a significant statistical difference between the groups and at different time regarding the effectiveness after intervention (P < 0.05). The obtained results indicated that each of the interventions alone can result in improvement of sleep quality, but there was no significant statistical difference among them. Conclusions: Foot massage and foot bath positive effect on the sleep quality of patients with ACS can be used as a complementary action.