The effect of Aromatherapy on Pain, Itching, State Anxiety Levels and Respiratory Distress in Children with Burns: A Systematic Review

Background: Search of the literature reveals that there is no published systematic review on the effect of aromatherapy therapy on the pediatric and adolescent burns. For this reason, we conducted a systematic review to inspect the effects of massage therapy on reducing pain, itching, and anxiety levels in children with burns. Materials and Methods: In this systematic review, English databases such as Medline, Scopus, Web of Science, EMBASE and Cochrane Library, no time limitation were conducted from inception until February 2019. Results: Three studies evaluated the effect of aromatherapy in pediatric burn patients Results: In the first study, massage therapy with Johnson's Baby Bedtime Oil decreased significantly all the pain, itching, and anxiety level of adolescents in a burn unit (p < 0.001). In the second study, 284 children were massaged with aromatherapy in a burns ward, no significant difference were observed in terms of comfort behavior scores (p=0.18), or heart rates (p=0.18) among the groups’ oil. The third study was conducted on 71 pediatric burn patients, aromatherapy significantly decreased the pain, itching, and anxiety level (p <0.001). Heart rate showed a significant decrease from 118 to 109 and respiratory rate decreased significantly from 34 to 30, p Conclusion: Inhalation with essential oils can improve the pain, itching, state anxiety, respiration, the child's falling asleep, and the calmness in the pediatric burn patients. This method of treatment can be beneficial and the findings of these studies should be interpreted with caution due to the high heterogeneity between the studies, the small number of studies and small sample sizes.