Massage Therapy May Ease Pain in Patients with Dementia, Study Suggests

Therapeutic massage may be helpful in relieving pain in residents with dementia. Researchers from Bond University in Queensland, Australia, randomly assigned 10 elderly residents with dementia and advanced dementia living in an aged care facility to one of two groups: one group received 10 minutes of massage (effleurage, kneading, and trigger point therapy) four times a week over 4 weeks, and the second group received no massage therapy and served as a control.

Although after the intervention researchers found no significant changes on a scale measuring pain assessment in patients with advanced dementia, they did find that patients who received massage therapy showed more improvement on the pain scale than residents who did not receive massage therapy.

“Therapeutic massage may provide a useful adjunct to the current pain management plan of patients with dementia,” they concluded. The results were published in the April 23, 2015 online Dementia (https://bit.ly/1EDrPmT).