Iranian Journal of Rehabilitation Research in Nursing

Introduction: Incisional chest and sternal pain is one of prevalent in patients after open heart surgery. If pain is not properly managed it may prevent patients from performing activities such as deep breathing and effective coughing which are important factors for preventing postoperative respiratory complications. Methods: This is a quasi-experimental study on patients who were undergone open heart surgery and were spending 2ed day post operation in ICUOH. It is done on 30 patients who were randomly selected and divided into two equal experimental and control groups. The study tools were a questionnaire including demographic information and Numeric Rating scale for measuring patient’s pain. Participants underwent three sessions of deep breathing & coughing on second postoperative day and then their pain were scored by NRS. In experiment group 3 other sessions of deep breathing and coughing were preceded by cold application on patients' sternum for 20 minutes and in control group these maneuvers were performed without applying gel pack. Data were analyzed using SPSS software. Result: Results of this study showed that cold therapy was effective for managing patients' pain associated with deep breathing and coughing following open heart surgery and the mean pain scores post intervention in experimental and control groups were 3/9±1/8 and 5/5±1/9 respectively (p>0.01). Conclusion: This study demonstrates that cold therapy is useful for managing patients' pain associated with deep breathing & coughing following CABG surgery. Cold therapy is low risk, low cost and can be easily integrated into nursing practice since cold packs are easily accessible in most hospitals. With nurses' close supervision, cold therapy is a safe and effective pain management modality that gives patients an active role in their pain management.