Evaluation the cooling gelpad and ice pack on wound healing and intensity perineal pain after episiotomy in primparous women

Abstract

Background: Episiotomy occuring during delivery can be a source of serious short and long term morbidity. So a delay in healing can also increase the duration of perineal pain. Nowadays attention has recently focused on maternal morbidity and improving diagnosis and treatment of perineal injury following childbirth. So, this study was done to evaluate the effectiveness of cold therapy in two patient groups (gel pad and ice pack) and compare them with control group in term of wound healing and intensity perineal pain after episiotomy in primparous women who gave birth at Hazrat Ommolbanin University Maternity Hospital in Mashhad-Iran from October 2005 to February 2006. Methods and material: In this randomized controlled trial, 121 healthy primparous women with include and exclude criteria which underwent normal delivery with episiotomy were chosen in the two cold therapy groups(gel pad and ice pack) and one control group. Evaluation of wound healing with REEDA scale and evaluation of intensity pain with numeric scale (NRS) (0-10) during the first 4 hours and on 1st,2nd,5th,10th days after episiotomy and evaluation of satisfaction of women from analgesia at 10th day were conducted. Data were analysed by statistic methods with chi-square, kruskal Wallis. Mann-withney u, jonckheere trepstra, analysis variance and exact tests with software spss. Results: The results showed a statistically significant difference in the wound healing in 2nd day (P