Effectiveness of Acupressure on Quantity of Expressed Breast Milk (EBM) Among Preterm Mothers Admitted to the Postnatal and Kangaroo Mother Care Wards of Kasturba Hospital, Manipal

Abstract

Objective: To assess the impact of acupressure on the volume of breast milk expression. Design: A design involving a quasi-experimental approach with a post-test-only control group. Setting: Postnatal and kangaroo mother care wards of Kasturba Hospital Manipal. Participants: 42 preterm mothers delivered between 30–34 weeks of gestation who were expressing breast milk for their neonates. Intervention: The study had two groups, experimental and control group. The first 21 preterm mothers were recruited to experimental group and next 21 to control group by purposive sampling. The experimental group mothers were given acupressure treatment for 12 minutes twice daily for one week. The acupressure points selected were Neiguan (P6), Quichi (LI-11) and Sanyinjiao (SP6) on either side. Both the groups were asked to measure the quantity of expressed breast milk for 24 hours using a calibrated conical measure for seven days and recorded on a tool developed by the researcher. Measurements: The data underwent analysis through variance analysis. (ANOVA) Results: Repeated measure analysis of varience (RM-ANOVA) was computed to check whether quantity of expressed breast milk was better over time of therapy (7 days) within the group. The data violated the assumption of sphericity so, Greenhouse Geisser correction was applied which showed a significance difference in the mean expressed breast milk volume for both the groups over a period of 7 days [F (1.942, 40) = 6.721, p =0.002]. Mixed ANOVA was done to test the difference between the groups [F = 0.134, df=1, 40; p =0.716]. There was no statistically significant difference in the mean volume of expressed breast milk between the experimental and control groups. Conclusion: This research study infers that Accupressure had no effect on improving the quantity of expressed breast milk. Additional research with larger sample sizes is necessary to assess the efficacy of acupressure. Implication for practice: A frequent reason reported for the early discontinuation or reduced exclusivity of breastfeeding among women who have started is inadequate milk supply. If nurses in NICU and postnatal wards are trained in acupressure and if given for a longer duration it may be useful as a cost effective and noninvasive modality of care. There are no studies which prove that acupressure can improve lactation. So there is a great need for further research in this direction for the management of lactation problems.