Massage therapy in post-operative rehabilitation for children with cerebral palsy

¶ … Authors Communicate

There are a number of points of interest regarding "Massage therapy in post-operative rehabilitation of children and adolescents with cerebral palsy - a pilot study." On the whole this is an extremely well-organized article, which is one of its primary strengths. The different sections and phases of the research are well documented. There are a variety of tables that elucidate several components related to the literature review, the results, and the particulars of the subjects considered in the research. However, there is more than one area of the study in which the researchers could have benefited from the use of more substantial effort and a more thorough methodology, which is certainly reflected in the results and the conclusion.

The central weakness of this study is the fact that all of the results were based on research performed on just six subjects. To the credit of the researchers they initially had seven participants, although one declined to continue with the research (Nilsson, 2011, 128). As such, there were certain elements of the methodology employed that seem a little suspect. An excellent example of this fact is reflected in the length of the study, which occurred over approximately 18 months. The obvious implication is that with more participants, more data could have been gathered in less time. The ramifications of the paltry number of participants had a profound effect upon the data and its analysis, which was devoid of statistical calculations because of an insufficient power. This fact was addressed somewhat unconvincingly in the article with the belief that "due to the limited experience of massage therapy in the literature, it was important to start with a small number of participants to evaluate the intervention and the study design" (Nilsson, 2011, 129). It may have been necessary to start with a limited number of participants, but the researchers still should have had enough to employ statistical calculations, particularly since half of the research performed was quantitative.

Another eminent aspect of this study that could have benefitted from a more thorough approach was the literature review. The authors are to be commended for the organized fashion in which they presented this information -- in an orderly table involving author's names, the results, and the numbers of participants. To the credit of the authors of "Massage therapy," a pair of the studies only had five and four participants, respectively. However, the literature review for this document contained only nine articles. More articles could have provided the authors with a firmer basis for the study they conducted, particularly since the results of this study were largely inconclusive and denoted no difference between the heart rate of the intervention group between massage therapy and physiotherapy -- while the only increase in heart rate was for the control which rested before engaging in physiotherapy (Nilsson, 2011, 129). This latter result seems a little obvious and not truly worthy of study, since conceivably after resting for 20 minutes, any activity -- even physiotherapy -- would increase one's heart rate Therefore, the findings don't necessarily support the author's conclusions that "there is an increased sensitivity to touch in the children who got massage therapy" (Nilsson, 2011, 130), which is why they are suggesting future studies in this area.

A more thorough literature review might have elucidated this point prior to the study thereby rendering it more efficacious, if the authors had chosen to include review articles or educational reports (which they did not), or perhaps used some other literature review sources other than Pubmed and Cinahl. The relative paucity of articles reviewed for this study helped to offset some of the positive aspects of the review, which indicated that none of the previous studies were randomized clinical trials and that post-operative rehabilitation massage therapy had not been evaluated. The authors did a good job by conducting a study that incorporated both of these aspects, but should have reviewed more articles to find other areas that they could have tested as well.