Written by Joyce Smith, BS. Lavender aromatherapy significantly reduced anxiety and cortisol levels in the forty-five participating open-heart surgery patients compared to the placebo group.

botanicalsOpen -heart surgery, the most common method of treatment for cardiovascular disease, causes high levels of anxiety that affects the parasympathetic, sympathetic and endocrine systems causing increased cortisol levels, increased heart rate and blood pressure, and even cardiac irritability and arrhythmia.1

Aromatherapy is a complementary treatment for anxiety that has been popularized in many countries in recent years and frequently used by nurses in clinical settings.2 While many studies have proven its benefits for an array of medical problems, no previous studies have been conducted to prove its benefits for open-heart surgery patients; therefore, the present study was done to assess the effect of lavender aromatherapy on anxiety and blood cortisol levels in candidates scheduled for open-heart surgery in an Iranian hospital .

This single-blind clinical trial 3 involved 90 subjects who were randomly allocated to an intervention group (n=45) and a control group (n=45). They inhaled either 2 drops of lavender or 2 drops of distilled water respectively for 20 minutes. A Spielberger questionnaire was completed by all study participants; cortisol levels and vital signs of all participants were recorded before and after intervention.

  • Mean systolic BP, pulse, and respiration rate significantly decreased after intervention in the two groups, compared to before intervention (P = 0.001), but the mean difference was not significant between the two groups before and after intervention
  • Paired t-tests revealed that aromatherapy significantly produced a higher reduction in the mean anxiety score in the study group compared to the control group [2.00 (1.26) vs. 1.11 (1.17)] (P<0.001) group.
  • Paired t-test also showed that the reduction of cortisol levels from 16.76 to 14.88 in the study group and from 16.19 to 15.77 in the control group was significant (P < 0.001).
  • Based on the ANCOVA test, lavender aromatherapy produced a 69.6% decrease in blood cortisol levels and 10.8% reduction in anxiety scores.
  • Plasma cortisol levels and the anxiety scores were significantly correlated both before aromatherapy (r =0.566, P < 0.001) as well as after aromatherapy (r = 0.536, P < 0.001). In fact, the subjects with higher plasma cortisol obtained higher scores in the Spielberger anxiety questionnaire (which validates their higher levels of anxiety).

In conclusion, the present study showed that lavender aromatherapy could reduce the level of anxiety and cortisol in open-heart surgery patients prior to surgery and could therefore serve an important function in clinical settings as an adjunct therapy for pre-surgery anxiety reduction.

Source: Hosseini S, Heydari A, Vakili M, Moghadam S, Tazyky S. Effect of lavender essence inhalation on the level of anxiety and blood cortisol in candidates for open-heart surgery. Iranian J Nursing Midwifery Res 2016;21:397-401.

© 2016 Iranian Journal of Nursing and Midwifery Research. Creative Commons Attribution‑Non Commercial‑Share Alike 3.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non‑commercially, as long as the author is credited and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.

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Posted October 31, 2017.

Joyce Smith, BS, is a degreed laboratory technologist. She received her bachelor of arts with a major in Chemistry and a minor in Biology from  the University of Saskatchewan and her internship through the University of Saskatchewan College of Medicine and the Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

References:

  1. Ghardashi F. Factors affecting preoprative anxiety. koomesh Journal. 2007;8(3):123-130.
  2. Fayazi S, Babashahi M, Rezaei M. The effect of inhalation aromatherapy on anxiety level of the patients in preoperative period. Iranian journal of nursing and midwifery research. 2011;16(4).
  3. Hosseini S, Heydari A, Vakili M, Moghadam S, Tazyky S. Effect of lavender essence inhalation on the level of anxiety and blood cortisol in candidates for open-heart surgery. Iranian journal of nursing and midwifery research. 2016;21(4):397.