Osteopathic Research Web

Is touch capable of inducing a therapeutic change in patients? – An experimental study

Item

Title

Is touch capable of inducing a therapeutic change in patients? – An experimental study

Author(s)

Rassouli, A

Abstract

Background: Palpation is commonly used by manual therapists to help assess and diagnose musculoskeletal conditions. Techniques utilised by practitioners all require touch, with some osteopathic techniques requiring long periods of contact. Therapeutic touch (TT) is touch with the intention of healing. Studies exploring the effects of touch or TT often look into its influence on anxiety, or pain relief on patients with medical conditions. With touch being an integral part of manual practice, it is important to establish how much pain relief patients experience is from the touch itself. Furthermore, it was beneficial to explore the pain relieving qualities of therapeutic touch in patients without daily chronic pain. Objective: The objective was to investigate the research question: “Will TT induce a pain pressure threshold (PPT) and pain perception (PP) change in European School of Osteopathy (ESO) patients” compared to a control and balanced ligamentous tension (BLT) technique. Design: A single-blinded randomised controlled study. Methods: Participants received TT, BLT or no intervention (control) to the right shoulder for 3 minutes. Inclusion criteria: Consenting ESO students, participants with no diagnosed shoulder conditions. Exclusion criteria: Subjects with a shoulder condition, recent injury to the arm or sensory loss in the arm. An algometer and visual analogue scale (VAS) were used to record pre and post intervention data. Shapiro-Wilks and further explorative tests were used to assess demographic characteristics, with Kruskal-Wallis (KW) tests conducted to compare between pre and post intervention data. Results: There were 63 participants included in this study. Non-parametric KW tests revealed no statistical significance (P>0.05) between TT, BLT and control groups both with pre and post readings of algometry and VAS. Discussion: The interpretation of these results suggested that touch did not have a significant influence on pain and indicated that there is no difference between BLT and TT as an intervention for PPT and PP. Due to a lack of literature directly exploring a link between TT and pain in asymptomatic patients, and the limitations present within the study, there is still more to be further investigated regarding TT and pain, specifically within osteopathic practice. Conclusion: More studies are required investigating TT’s influence on pain relief in asymptomatic patients. The effects of a larger sample size and more experienced practitioners would be beneficial to explore this.

presented at

European School of Osteopathy

Date Accepted

2019

Date Submitted

19.11.2019 18:31:09

Type

osteo_thesis

Language

English

Submitted by:

62

Pub-Identifier

16510

Inst-Identifier

1229

Keywords

Pain perception, Pain pressure threshold, Therapeutic touch, Touch

Recommended

0

Item sets

Thesis

Rassouli, A, “Is touch capable of inducing a therapeutic change in patients? – An experimental study”, Osteopathic Research Web, accessed May 3, 2025, https://www.osteopathic-research.com/s/orw/item/319