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European Journal of Integrative Medicine, 2016-08-01, Volume 8, Issue 4, Pages 589-590, Copyright © 2016
Introduction:
The study investigated the effectiveness of Shiatsu therapy
in relation to the management of health and wellbeing concerns of cancer
and palliative care patients in an out-patient clinic.
Method:
Patients are referred to the service for symptom management,
particularly stress and anxiety, but also other symptoms such as nausea
or insomnia. Data was collected following use of the Measure Yourself
Concerns and Wellbeing (MYCaW) questionnaire, which was designed for
evaluating supportive care interventions.
Results: Mean changes in post-intervention MYCaW scores were highly significant ( p
< 0.001), demonstrating considerable
improvements in both presenting symptoms and perceptions of wellbeing.
Based on a significance level of 0.05, both the Wilcoxon signed-ranks
test and the two-tailed t
-test indicated that post-treatment ranks and means were statistically
significantly lower than pre-treatment ranks and means in the three
categories.
Conclusion:
Anxiety, stress management and pain scores were the most
improved. Wellbeing scores also improved, on average, by two points on
the Likert scale. Patients have stated that ‘being listened to’ and
‘being heard’ were important factors when describing how Shiatsu had
helped.
We suggest that a study using larger numbers is necessary in
order to provide more robust evidence rather than emerging trends. In
view of the results, we consider Shiatsu to be a relatively safe and
effective therapy in cancer and palliative care settings.
Neil Browne, Fernando Cabo, Donatella Gabrielli, Yumiko Ishii, Diego Robirosa, and Rita Serra