RESUMO
INTRODUCTION: Gastrointestinal cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy usually suffer from fatigue, which may affect different aspects of their lives. OBJECTIVE: The current study aimed to investigate the effect of massage therapy on fatigue after chemotherapy in gastrointestinal cancer patients. METHOD: In this quasi-experimental study, 88 gastrointestinal cancer patients were randomly allocated into two groups of intervention and control. Patients received the chemotherapy for 3 h. The intervention group received four sessions of foot massage with an interval of 40 min during the chemotherapy. The massage duration was 7 min for each foot. Fatigue was measured using the visual analogue scale to evaluate fatigue severity just after and 24 h after the chemotherapy. Friedman and Mann-Whitney U tests were used to analyze the data. RESULTS: The mean age of patients was 59/18 ± 9/35, and the most common type of cancer was gastric cancer (40%). There was a significant difference in the mean score of fatigue between the two groups immediately after (P > 0.001) and 24 h after chemotherapy (P < 0.001). In the intervention group, fatigue score decreased gradually (P = 0.031), while it increased in the control group (P = 0.001). CONCLUSION: This study demonstrated that foot massage, as a simple method, could reduce chemotherapy-induced fatigue.