Effects of modified positioning and mobilization on back pain and delayed bleeding in patients who had received heparin and undergone angiography: A pilot study

Objective mine the effects that a modified positioning and mobilization routine had on back pain and delayed bleeding in patients who had received heparin and undergone cardiac angiography. erimental research design was used. Each patient was assigned randomly to either the control group, which required 6 hours of bed rest after cardiac angiography, or the experimental group. The experimental group had modified positioning, in which the head of the bed was elevated to a maximum of 45 degrees, and modified mobilization, in which they were ambulated briefly at the bedside 4 hours after angiography. g rdiology units of a 700-bed urban teaching hospital in western Canada. tients admitted for nonemergent cardiac angiography were approached for consent, to attain a sample of 29 patients, and were randomly assigned to the experimental or the control group atient was randomly assigned before cardiac angiography. The assignment was confidential until the patient was admitted to the cardiac unit after angiography. A demographic tool and the McGill Present Pain Intensity Scale were used to collect data. Perception of pain was evaluated over four observation periods. A research assistant monitored sanguineous drainage on the dressing and hematoma to evaluate the presence of delayed bleeding. nalysis aphic information was analyzed primarily through descriptive statistics. Results were analyzed to compare back pain and delayed bleeding between the two groups. Wilcoxon scores and t tests both were used for analysis and correlated well with each other. s oup with the modified positioning and mobilization routine experienced significantly less pain overall (p=0.02), less pain at each interval, and significantly less pain intensity (p<0.05). There was no difference in bleeding. One person in each group had an estimated blood loss of more than 100 ml through the pressure dressing. sion ilot study supports our hypothesis that modifying the immobilization of patients after cardiac angiography is associated with a reduction in back pain and with no increase of delayed bleeding at the femoral access site. The results support the need for further investigation of ambulation interventions after cardiac angiography.