The effect of touch on nutritional intake of chronic organic brain syndrome patients

Inadequate nutrition, a major cause of illness and complications among elderly adults, is of particular import for those who cannot provide for themselves. We evaluated the effect of gentle touch during eating on nutritional intake (NI) of 42 institutionalized chronic organic brain syndrome (COBS) patients. Patients were randomly assigned to experimental or control groups. NI was evaluated for 3 consecutive weeks. During Weeks 1 and 3 all patients were encouraged verbally to eat. In the treatment week experimental group members were touched gently during this verbal encouragement. Repeated measures analyses of variance were used to evaluate the effect of touch on NI. In the first week NI for the groups did not differ. NI was significantly greater in the experimental than in the control group (p less than .01) during the other 2 weeks. Tactile stimulation, a simple intervention, may be an important adjunct to verbal encouragement to improve NI in COBS patients.