Photo courtesy of Barbara
E. Carver/New York College
of Health Professions
Massage therapy can reduce pain, fatigue, and anxiety in cancer patients, according to a review and meta-analysis published in Pain Medicine.
Massage therapy is commonly used among people seeking pain management, and research has generally supported its use.
However, there has been no published, rigorous review of the available research and evidence for massage therapy’s efficacy for pain populations, especially for cancer populations.
So Courtney Boyd, of the Samueli Institute in Alexandria, Virginia, and her colleagues set out to conduct just such a review.
The team assessed the quality of massage therapy research and evidence for its efficacy in treating pain, function-related quality of life, and health-related quality of life in cancer patients.
The researchers reviewed data from 12 high-quality studies and 4 low-quality studies.
The team said they could not assess health-related quality of life, emotional stress, or activity outcomes because too few of the studies examined these outcomes.
However, the data suggested that massage therapy can effectively reduce pain intensity or severity when compared to no treatment (standardized mean difference [SMD]=-0.20) or active comparators (SMD=-0.55).
Massage therapy also proved effective for reducing fatigue (SMD=-1.06) and anxiety (SMD=-1.24) when compared to active comparators.
Based on these results, the researchers concluded that massage therapy may have beneficial effects in cancer patients, so they should consider it as an option.
However, before definitive clinical conclusions and recommendations can be made at a policy level, specific factors surrounding the massage protocol, as well as selection of appropriate controls and standard outcomes, need to be well-understood.
