Therapeutic Touch efficacy: A Systematic Review

Background: Recently, the "Disruptions in the Energy Field" have been omitted from the list of nursing diagnoses published by the North American Nursing Diagnosis Association (NANDA). Therapeutic touch is a scientific nursing intervention. The aim of this systematic review was to identify the efficacy of therapeutic touch (TT) and investigate the tenability of omitting this diagnosis from the NANDA nursing diagnosis list.

Methods: For the purpose of the study, we employed the English and Persian articles in complementary therapy (Therapeutic Touch) area  published within January, 2006-December, 2016. The articles were obtained by searching such databases as the Proquest, PubMed, Science Direct, SID, Magiran, and Iran Medex. The searches were performed using the following keywords and their MeSH equivalents: “Therapeutic Touch", "Aura Therapy", and "Energy Healing". Finally, 13 articles were selected based on the inclusion criteria. The articles were evaluated based on a standard checklist presented by the Cochrane database. The articles were presented based on PRISMA format.

Results: Out of the 3 review articles and 736 research articles, which were retrieved, 13 studies were examined in full-text with especial focus on the quality of methodology sections.

Conclusion: Based on the reviewed articles, that observing no significant impact following TT interventions does not mean that this approach is actually ineffective. It may just be due to inappropriate methodology and research design employed for investigation. Therefore, we need to focus on the methodologies of these randomized control trials rather than their final results.