A study to assess the effectiveness of warm foot bath therapy on the reduction of blood pressure among hypertensive patients attending a tertiary care setting

Abstract

Background: The goal of hypertension management is to keep blood pressure within normal bounds while also enhancing elderly patients’ quality of life and health. Warm foot baths are a straightforward, affordable, and effective therapy method that can be used in naturopathy to alleviate hypertension. Materials and Methods: This study used a quasi-experimental design that included two groups, the hypertensive intervention group and hypertensive control group, which was studied over 3 months between March 2020 and May 2020. The necessary ethical committee permissions with reference number VMRF/2020/037 and informed consent from all the patients included have been obtained properly before proceeding with the study. Results: Among the 100 individuals involved in the study, 53% were males and 47% were females. The mean age among the intervention group was 53.62 ± 7.26, and 52.84 ± 6.47 among the control group. The majority of the males included in the study were nonsmokers (69.8%). The mean ± standard deviation of systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) in the intervention group during the pretest phase was 157.3 ± 13.4 and 88.1 ± 9.4, whereas, after the intervention of foot bath therapy, the measurements of SBP and DBP were reduced significantly to 133.8 ± 9.7 and 76.9 ± 7.2, which was statistically significant with a P value < 0.001. Conclusion: Warm foot bath soak therapy is anticipated to be used as a nonpharmacological treatment for hypertension in older patients.

Keywords

• blood pressure
• foot bath therapy
• hypertension
• nonpharmacological intervention