ผลของการสร้างจินตภาพต่ออาการคลื่นไส้ ขย้อนและอาเจียน ในผู้ป่วยโรคมะเร็งลำไส้ใหญ่และทวารหนัก ที่ได้รับยาเคมีบำบัด

Abstract

Nausea, retching, and vomiting are common side effects of chemotherapy treatment for cancer patients. Guided imagery is a symptom management method which is believed to reduce the severity of the side effects. This quasi-experimental two-group pretest-posttest research aimed to examine the effect of guided imagery on nausea, retching, and vomiting among colorectal cancer patients receiving chemotherapy. The subjects were colorectal cancer patients receiving chemotherapy admitted at Vajira Hospital and Maharaj Nakorn Chiang Mai Hospital. The forty-four subjects were purposively selected and equally assigned into experimental and control groups. Subjects had similar gender, age, weight, and cycles of chemotherapy. The experimental group received guided imagery from the researcher and routine care from ward nurses while the control group received routine care from ward nurses. The research instruments consisted of 1) the demographic form, 2) the Rhodes’s Nausea, Vomiting, and Retching Assessment Form-2 translated into Thai by Rachanee Namjantra, with a test-retest reliability of .98, 3) the guided imagery handbook, and 4) the guided imagery audio clip developed by the researcher based on the literature review and experts’ recommendations. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The differences of the nausea, retching, and vomiting scores before and after the treatment within the experimental group were tested using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test, whereas the differences of those after the treatment between the experimental and control groups were tested using the Man-Whitney U test. The study findings revealed that: 1. After the treatment, the experimental group had significantly decreased severity scores for nausea and retching compared with before the treatment (p = 0.001), whereas the group had no significantly decreased severity score for vomiting compared with before the treatment (p = 0.18). 2. After the treatment, the experimental group had significantly decreased severity scores for nausea and retching compared with the control group (p < 0.001); however, the experimental group had no significantly decreased severity score for vomiting compared with the control group (p = 0.409). The results of this study indicate that guided imagery can decrease the severity of nausea, retching, and vomiting among colorectal cancer patients receiving chemotherapy. Thus, nurses may suggest guided imagery as an alternative method to decrease the severity of nausea, retching, and vomiting among colorectal cancer patients receiving chemotherapy.