The Great East Japan Earthquake inflicted immense damage over a wide area of eastern Japan with the consequent tsunami. Department of Traditional Asian Medicine, Tohoku University, started providing medical assistance to the disaster-stricken regions mainly employing traditional Asian therapies.We visited seven evacuation centers in Miyagi and Fukushima Prefecture and provided acupuncture/massa...

background: at the present time, massage has become a popular therapy employed in complementary medicine. there is evidence showing that back massage might have many positive psychological effects, possibly due to having many autonomic nervous system afferent inputs. one of the frequent positions during massage is prone position. however, there has been limited research investigating the effect...

OBJECTIVE Sport massage, a manual therapy for muscle and soft tissue pain and weakness, is a popular and widely used modality for recovery after intense exercise. Our objective is to determine the effectiveness of sport massage for improving recovery after strenuous exercise. DATA SOURCES We searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, and CINAHL using all current and historical names for sport massage. Referen...

Introduction As a complementary therapy, massage provides a cost-effective therapeutic tool with low risk if appropriately administered.1 A growing body of research indicates that massage can be an effective therapeutic tool for pain relief and symptom management. For example, a recent study reports the results for a large group of patients with cancer who received massage therapy for pain and ...

HYPOTHESIS Adjuvant massage therapy improves pain management and postoperative anxiety among many patients who experience unrelieved postoperative pain. Pharmacologic interventions alone may not address all of the factors involved in the experience of pain. DESIGN Randomized controlled trial. SETTING Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Indianapolis, Indiana....

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES To examine the effect of massage therapy and Healing Touch on anxiety, depression, subjective caregiver burden, and fatigue experienced by caregivers of patients undergoing autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplant. DESIGN Quasi-experimental repeated measures. SETTING Oncology/hematology outpatient clinic in a large midwestern city. SAMPLE 36 caregivers: 13 in the c...

Abdominal massage therapy was once an accepted treatment for constipation. Subsequently interest faded, but recent years have seen a revival of interest in massage. It is therefore timely to ask whether or not it is an effective form of treatment for this condition. Computerized literature searches were carried out to retrieve all controlled clinical trials. Data were extracted in a standardize...

We are pleased to offer three distinct articles in this issue of the IJTMB covering education, sports therapy, and pain management in opioid-dependent patients. Bauer's education article looks at a massage therapy program developed specifically to address the complexity of integrating massage into a multidisciplinary hospital setting. There are several features I find useful: the description of...