The effect of rose water on the anxiety level of aged admitted to cardiac intensive care units

Background: The most common cause of elderly admission is cardiovascular disease and also, anxiety can cause nonspecific symptoms in over 80% of elderly people admitted to intensive care units that threaten their lives. On the other hand, using drugs to control it have physical side effects or drug dependency. Therefore, anxiety management is one of the most important nursing cares that can be managed by using non-pharmacological methods including aromatherapy. Methods: This study was a semi experimental that was performed on 60 elderly admitted to cardiac intensive care units who had no cognitive impairment. Coin tossing was used for random allocation (selecting interventional and control group (and sampling was based on sequential and admission to the ward. Data collection tools were demographic information questionnaires, Abbreviated Mental Test and Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale which was completed before, first, second and third day of intervention for both groups with ethical considerations. The intervention in the interventional group was using of rose water for three consecutive nights. For data analysis, descriptive and inferential statistics (independent t-test and repeated measure) were used by SPSS software version 22. Results: Before intervention, there was a significant difference between the two groups in anxiety (p <0.0001) and the two groups were not homogeneous. At the end of the intervention, the level of anxiety decreased in both groups, statistically significant (p <0.009). There was no significant difference between the anxiety score in the control group before and after the intervention (p = 0.321). But in the interventional group, the anxiety score decreased from the time interval before the intervention to the third day of intervention, which is statistically significant between the four periods (p <0.0001). A two-way test between time intervals showed that there was a significant difference between the anxiety score of all two time intervals (p <0.005). Conclusion: Considering the aged population of the country and the prevalence of heart disease among them, it is necessary to pay attention to management of anxiety in the elderly, especially when admitted to the intensive care units. In addition, it is possible to use complementary medicine, and with respect to Iranian’s culture rose water is the cheapest and most commonly used fragrance available to reduce the anxiety of elderly.