Herb foot-bath has improving effects on sleep quality and symptom distress of maintenance hemodialysis patients

Hemodialysis (HD) is an incomplete renal substitutive therapy to interchange blood and dialyzate between semipermeable membrane so as to clean metabolic wastes and toxic products, maintain electrolyte and acid-base balance, and eliminate excessive moisture from body. Because of double affliction of the pain itself and treatment induced complication, most of Maintenance Hemodialysis (MHD) patients are bothered by influenced sleep quality and other symptom distress. In the study, we set out to investigate the intervention effect of herb foot-bath therapy to improve sleep quality and symptom distress for them. It was an experimental study in two stages including preliminary screening survey and herb foot-bath intervention. 142 MHD patients from Xiangya Hospital of Central South University and the Third Hospital of Central South University in accordance with inclusive criteria were randomly divided into control and intervention group. Patients in intervention group were intervened by regular herb foot-bath for 4 w. Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and Dialysis Symptom Index (DSI) were applied to quantify sleep quality and symptom distress of MHD patients. The data were analysis by SPSS19.0. The results showed that a majority of MHD patients were undergoing somnipathy and most of them experienced several symptoms at the same time with high scores of PSQI and DSI. Sleep quality was positively correlated with the symptom burden. To some extent, it was found that herb foot-bath therapy can effectively improve sleep quality of MHD patients and mitigate their symptom distress.