Effect of nurse-led home-based biofeedback intervention on the blood pressure levels among patients with hypertension: Pretest-posttest study.

Abstract

To investigate the effect of nurse-led home-based biofeedback intervention on the blood pressure levels among patients with hypertension. Nurse-led interventions are emerging as cost-effective as well as clinically proven in chronic illness management. Hypertension, a leading long-term cardiovascular condition, has autonomic dysregulation and increased sympathetic tone as its pathophysiological background. Complementary interventions evidenced to interplay hypertension pathophysiology. A pretest-posttest design. Uncomplicated primary hypertension outpatients were randomly assigned as study group (<i>n</i> = 173) and control group (<i>n</i> = 173) at a tertiary care hospital. Sociodemographic, clinical, and outcome variables [the baseline blood pressure and galvanic skin response (GSR)] were collected. Study group patients were given four teaching sessions of abdominal breathing-assisted relaxation facilitated by GSR biofeedback. Daily home practice was encouraged and monitored to measure the effects on blood pressure and GSR at the end of the 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd month of intervention. The study group participants showed significant decrease in mean (SD) systolic [140.77 (8.31) to 136.93 (7.96), <i>F</i> = 469.08] and diastolic blood pressure [88.24 (5.42) to 85.77 (4.66), <i>F</i> = 208.21]. In contrast, control group participants had a mild increase in the mean systolic (<i>F</i> = 6.02) and diastolic blood pressure (<i>F</i> = 4.70) values from pretest to posttests. GSR showed a significant increase from 559.63 (226.33) to 615.03 (232.24), (<i>F</i> = 80.21) from pretest to posttest III. Use of home-based biofeedback-centered behavioral interventions enabled BP reduction among hypertensive patients. Further studies should use biochemical markers of sympathetic nervous system activity to endorse this home-based chronic illness intervention.