The Problem with Pain and Sleep After Surgery
Open heart surgery is a major operation. The doctors have to split open the breastbone and help the patient breathe with a machine. These things can cause serious pain, stress, and trouble sleeping.
The doctors want patients to recover quickly, and being pain-free can help. But managing the pain can be tricky. The pain itself and the drugs used to treat it can cause other problems.
They can make the patient need to stay on the breathing machine longer and can lead to complications, longer hospital stays, and higher costs.
Part 2: The Possible Solution: Peppermint Essential Oil
There might be other ways to handle the pain that don’t involve drugs. One possible solution is aromatherapy, which uses pleasant smells to help people feel better.
However, it’s not clear if it really works. Some past research suggests that smelling essential oils could help. Peppermint oil is already often used in care for very sick patients.
Researchers wanted to find out if peppermint oil could help patients feel less pain and sleep better after open heart surgery. They tested this idea with 64 adults who had the surgery.
Half of them were given peppermint oil to smell, and the other half were given water. They did this right before their breathing tube was removed, and then three times a day until their second night after surgery.
Part 3: The Results of the Study
The researchers looked at how the patients’ pain and sleep changed after the surgery. They found that the patients who smelled peppermint oil had less pain and better sleep than those who didn’t.
On a scale where higher scores meant worse sleep, the average sleep score was 20.10 for the peppermint oil group and 25.76 for the others on the first day.
On the second day, it was 18.63 for the peppermint group and 22.62 for the others. This difference was big enough to be meaningful. The peppermint group also needed less pain medicine.
The researchers think that certain parts of peppermint oil, especially menthol, might be responsible for its pain-relieving effects. Previous studies have also shown that peppermint oil can help people relax and sleep.
These effects could be very helpful for patients who are feeling stressed and in pain after waking up from heart surgery.
Part 4: Conclusion: A Simple Solution with Big Impact
The researchers acknowledge that their study was small and that they didn’t consider things like light and noise that could have affected the patients’ sleep.
Despite these limitations, their findings suggest that smelling peppermint oil can help patients feel less pain and sleep better after open heart surgery.
They conclude, “Inhaling peppermint essential oil can lower pain intensity for patients after open heart surgery and reduce their need for pain medicine.
This herbal product can also improve patients’ sleep in the first nights after surgery, making them more comfortable.
Considering its impact on pain and sleep quality, we believe peppermint oil can be safely used as an additional treatment to help relieve pain and comfort patients after heart surgery.”
If you care about pain, please read studies about vitamins that could help reduce bone fracture risk, and drinking electrolytes may help reduce muscle pain.
For more information about health, please see recent studies that the painkiller ibuprofen may strongly influence your liver, and results showing Marijuana for pain relief may lead to withdrawal symptoms.
The study was published in BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care.
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