Trials / Completed
CompletedNCT00065195
REST: Reducing End-of-Life Symptoms With Touch
Efficacy of Massage at the End of Life
- Status
- Completed
- Phase
- Phase 2
- Study type
- Interventional
- Enrollment
- 440 (planned)
- Sponsor
- National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) · NIH
- Sex
- All
- Age
- 18 Years
- Healthy volunteers
- Not accepted
Summary
The purpose of this study is to determine whether massage therapy is effective in reducing pain and distress and improving quality of life among cancer patients at life's end.
Detailed description
Relieving physical and emotional symptoms is a key component of end-of-life care. Despite care, terminally ill patients are still significantly burdened by unrelieved symptoms. Therapies that have potential to alleviate these symptoms deserve thorough investigation. This study will last 3 weeks. Participants in this study will be randomly assigned to receive six sessions of either moving or nonmoving touch therapy, in addition to usual hospice care, for 2 weeks. Moving touch therapy consists of massage therapy in which a trained therapist continually touches a person's body. The nonmoving touch therapy will be conducted by volunteers who have no previous experience in massage. Participants in this group will have a volunteer rub specific body parts for 3-minute intervals. Because current evidence suggests that thoughts of healing may influence the effectiveness of touch therapy, volunteers in the nonmoving therapy group will distract their minds to avoid thinking of healing processes. In both groups, the person administering the touch therapy will note all interruptions during a session, including talk, music, and television. Interviews about medication use, pain, and quality of life will be used to assess participants; these interviews will be conducted at study start, immediately before and after each therapy session, and at Weeks 1, 2, and 3.
Conditions
Interventions
| Type | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| PROCEDURE | Moving touch therapy | |
| PROCEDURE | Nonmoving touch therapy |
Timeline
- Start date
- 2003-11-01
- Primary completion
- 2007-03-01
- Completion
- 2007-03-01
- First posted
- 2003-07-21
- Last updated
- 2008-01-25
Locations
9 sites across 1 country: United States
Source: ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT00065195. Inclusion in this directory is not an endorsement.