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Abstract

Background: Patients in Pediatric Intensive Care Units (PICU) face high stressors. The autonomic nervous system (ANS) plays an important role in modulating stress and inflammatory responses. Excess stress reaction includes SNS over-stimulation and PNS suppression. If prolonged, this situation may be source of severe acute and chronic inflammation. Massage therapy is a noninvasive intervention that may regulate stress-induced ANS dysfunction by stimulating PNS and decreasing SNS responses; therefore, acting toward homeostasis. Objectives: Primary objective was to assess the massage effect on rebalancing the ANS function (measured by Heart Rate Variability, HRV). Secondary objective was to investigate the correlation between HRV and clinical severity (measured with Pediatric Logistic Organ Dysfunction (PELOD) Scores). Pilot study objective was to determine study feasibility. Methods: All PICU patients were eligible for the study. 22 patients were randomly allocated into one or six massage sessions per day (30-min per session). HRV was extracted from PICU central station. Clinical information was collected from medical records. Descriptive statistics and graphs were used. Study feasibility (problems and solutions) was also assessed. Results: 18 subjects were included in the analyses. logHF and logLF increased significantly during the first massage session compared to baseline values (p