Pain management: Comparison of application times for ice packs used to relieve perineal pain after normal birth
I have chosen this article for my critique because my client was a mother who experienced 1st degree perineal lacerations during the birthing process and was being treated with cryotherapy as an alternative to narcotic pain relief. This article addressed the trends of using cryotherapy to promote healing and pain reduction in perineal lacerations and episiotomies. I found this article to be extremely insightful as it addresses one of the key nursing interventions used to treat perineal lacerations to this day, as well as its rationale. This particular article is the second part of a two-stage study that was performed using controlled parallel, randomized clinical trials, with the evaluator blind to the outcome regarding the use of an ice pack to relieve perineal pain after normal birth.
While evidenced based practice shows that using ice packs for perineal pain is effective this study asks the question, whether applying ice packs to the perineal area to relieve the pain after birth for 10, 15, or 20 minutes made any difference? The results confirm the hypothesis that there is no difference in the analgesic effectiveness of the ice pack applied for the three different application times on women who report moderate or intense pain. The results showed that all postnatal women submitted to cryotherapy responded favorably despite the high number of women who refused to participate in the study (Oliveira, 2012).
This information is useful to me as a nurse as it directly related to my client who suffered from a 1st degree perineal laceration and was breast feeding and although being told numerous times she could have analgesics to help with the pain, she preferred the alternative treatment of cryotherapy/icepacks. Despite the many interventions used for the