The Effect of Massage Therapy Depends on the Context

The article The Effects of Massage Therapy by the Patient’s Relative on Vital Signs of Males Admitted in Critical Care Unit written by Adib-Hajbaghery et al. contributes important information to the field of complementary treatment methods. Most complementary treatment methods, such as massage therapy, are frequently recommended in nursing literature. There is still a lack of evidence, specially, about how and when these methods should be used in clinical practice. For example, my colleagues and I investigated the experience of massage therapy in children with cerebral palsy. The results demonstrated that these children did not always enjoy the intervention and their heart rate did not decrease compared with that of the control group. Despite the fact that this was a pilot study, which means that the results should not be taken in high evidence, the results indicated an important hypothesis. This hypothesis suggests that the effect of massage therapy probably depends on the context, which means that massage therapy does not work in every context.