Effective
pain management is crucial for patient recovery after
total knee arthroplasty (TKA).
Biofeedback therapy, which encourages relaxation and helps alleviate various conditions associated with stress, may help to decrease
postoperative pain in patients undergoing TKA. A quasi- experimental design was used to investigate the efficacy of a
biofeedback relaxation intervention in reducing
pain associated with postoperative continuous passive motion (
CPM) therapy. Sixty-six patients admitted to a general hospital in Taiwan for TKA were recruited and randomly assigned to the intervention or control group. The intervention group received
biofeedback training twice daily for 5 days, concurrent with
CPM therapy, whereas the control group did not receive the
biofeedback intervention.
Pain was measured using a numeric rating scale before and after each
CPM therapy session on postoperative days 1 through 5. The CPM-elicited
pain score was calculated by subtracting the pre-CPM
pain score from the post-CPM
pain score. Results of repeated-measures analysis of variance showed intervention group reported significantly less
pain caused by CPM than did the control group (f = 29.70, p < 0.001). The study results provide preliminary support for
biofeedback relaxation, a non-invasive and non-pharmacological intervention, as a complementary treatment option for
pain management in this population.