The Effect of Warm Footbath on the Quality of Sleep on Patients with Acute Coronary Syndrome in Cardiac Care Unit

Introduction: This study aimed to determine the effect of warm footbath before bedtime on the quality of sleep on patients with acute coronary syndrome in Cardiac Care Unit. Methods: This study was conducted on 120 patients admitted to CCU at Mazandaran Heart Center and randomly divided into two groups of intervention and control. In the intervention group, warm footbath was performed after the second night in hospital before bed time by 41 C water for 20 minutes for three consecutive nights; in contrast, the control group did not receive anything of this sort. The next day, St Mary s Hospital Sleep Questionnaire was completed to evaluate sleep quality. Then, the obtained data were analyzed using SPSS software and Friedman, Wilcoxon exact statistical tests. Results: The quality of sleep in the first night of hospitalization was different from the third night after the intervention in both groups and the improvement process of sleep quality was observed in both groups. Most patients had moderate impairments (23-36), which had not changed during the intervention. In intervention groups, 8 patients had severe sleep disorders (greater than 37), which declined to 1 after three nights of intervention. While, in the control group this number fell from 10 patients with severe sleep disorders to 5. Warm footbath had a great positive impact on patients suffering from severe sleep disorders (P 0.05). Conclusion: Although warm footbath did not improve the quality of sleep in all patients, it reduced the number of patients who had severe sleep disturbances.