A Study to Assess the Effectiveness of Cold Application in Reducing Pain during Chest Drain Removal among Patients following Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery (CABG) in Selected Hospital

INTRODUCTION: All post operative Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (CABG) patients will have at least one chest drain. Chest drain removal is one of the painful procedures that CABG patients reported to remember from the hospital stay. Though pharmaceutical therapy alleviates pain it is not effective in management of acute pain due to Chest Drain Removal (CDR). Cold application has thought to be effective in pain management, a study is undertaken to assess the effectiveness of cold application in reducing pain due to CDR. AIMS & OBJECTIVES: 1. To assess pre test and post test level of pain with chest drain among CABG patients in experimental and control groups 2. To establish the effectiveness of cold application in reducing pain due to CDR among CABG patients in experimental and control groups. 3. To compare pre and post test level of pain among CABG patients in experimental and control groups. 4. To ascertain the association between the effectiveness of cold application in reducing pain among CABG patients with selected demographic variables RESEARCH METHODOLOGY: DESIGN: Quantitative research, Quasi experimental pre-test and post-test with experimental and control group. SETTING: Super-speciality hospital. PARTICIPANTS: 60 post operative CABG patients with at least 1 chest drain and ready to remove the drain. INTERVENTION: Cold application with 6 ice cubes applied over the 5 cm circumference of the tube for 15 minutes prior to CDR. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Quantification of Pain and its quality using VAS and adapted McHill questionnaire. RESULTS: VAS and McHill score were significantly low in experimental group compared to the control group at P 0.05) of any demographical variables to pain among CABG patients. CONCLUSION: Cold application is effective, simple and easy to use to alleviate the pain due to CDR among CABG patients. No adverse incidents are reported throughout the study