Relaxation therapy guided by an audio-tape may lessen the pain people feel after abdominal surgery, study findings suggest.

Researchers found that among 102 patients who underwent surgery at a hospital in Thailand, those who received a short course of relaxation therapy afterward showed an immediate reduction in pain.

The therapy was a type of self-care, with patients listening to tape-recorded instructions that guided them in successively relaxing the muscles of the lower body, then upper body.

Patients in the treatment group listened to the tape for 15 minutes after taking their first post-surgery walk - a typically painful experience - while those in the comparison group rested quietly after their walks.

Immediately afterward, the patients used scales to rate their pain perception and “distress” over pain. Relaxation therapy, the researchers found, lowered patients’ sensation of pain and distress by about 55 percent compared with the comparison group.

Dr. Varunyupa Roykulcharoen of the Thai Red Cross College of Nursing in Bangkok led the study, which is published in the Journal of Advanced Nursing.

The reductions in pain sensation and distress were significant, and outdid results found in previous research on the effects of jaw relaxation, said study co-author Dr. Marion Good of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Part of the benefit may have to do with the therapy’s attention to the whole body, according to Good, who conducted the earlier, jaw-relaxation research.

In addition, she explained, relaxation therapy may ease pain in part by decreasing the sympathetic nervous system’s effect on pain mechanisms.

Good said she also suspects that when patients’ minds are focused on muscle relaxation, it serves as a distraction from their pain.

How well it might work for patients in other cultures is unknown, Good noted, as people in Thailand are accustomed to meditative practices and may be particularly open to relaxation therapy.

It would be worthwhile to study the technique in the U.S. and elsewhere, according to Good. With its use of tape-recorded guidance, she noted, the therapy would be easy to add on to traditional pain management with medication.

SOURCE: Journal of Advanced Nursing, September 2004.