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Published on: December 26, 2019
Development of a Novel Massage Therapy Outcome Measure for Children and Young Adults Receiving Hematopoietic Cell
Jessica Waller1, Rachel Bican1,2, David Collichio1
1Division of Clinical Therapies, Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, Ohio.
Background:
Children receiving hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HCT) often experience an unfortunate sequalae of negative effects including pain, deconditioning, and anxiety. Massage therapy (MT) has demonstrated effective non-pharmacological management of fatigue, pain, and anxiety in patients undergoing cancer treatment. Existing studies have been limited by the lack of available MT-specific outcome measures to track responses to interventions.
Purpose:
This study aimed to describe the creation of a novel MT-specific outcome measure to be utilized in the pediatric acute-care setting and establish construct validity for this measure to assess clinical effectiveness of MT interventions.
Setting:
An oncology ward at a large pediatric tertiary medical center in the United States.
Participants:
A total of 58 children and young adults undergoing HCT.
Research Design:
Retrospective Cohort Study.
Intervention:
A panel of massage therapists created a novel outcome measure, OMPREP, for use in MT sessions and performed a literature review to ensure face validity of the tool. This outcome measure was administered to patients and data were collected retrospectively to assess construct validity.
Results:
A total of 1,333 MT sessions were completed (80.7% completion rate) with the novel OMPREP outcome measure utilized on 100% of visits. Mean engagement (p<.001), response (p<.001), and pain (p<.001) scores were all significantly greater at evaluation and discharge compared to the lowest observed scores post-HCT.
Conclusion:
The novel MT-specific outcome measure, OMPREP, was feasible and demonstrated construct validity when implemented in a pediatric acute-care setting by massage therapists. This new tool may offer a quantitative measure of MT-interventions and assist in tracking patient outcomes.
