Comparing the Effect of Aromatherapy With Essential Oils of Rosa damascena and Lavender Alone and in Combination on Severity of Pain in the First Phase of Labor in Primiparous Women

Introduction Delivery is a stressful condition for pregnant women and its resulting pain is a common phenomenon and an unavoidable component of the delivery process, which is severe in more than half of the pregnant women (1,2). Excessive pain can exacerbate mother’s fear and anxiety, thereby reducing the contractility of the uterus and the rate of delivery progress (3,4). It has been shown that 71% of the mothers selected cesarean section due to the fear of delivery pain, which, in turn, caused complications for the mother and her fetus (5). There is a huge difference between the rates of cesarean section in the international level and our country. Cesarean section accounts for 10%-20% and 50%-65% of deliveries worldwide and in Iran, respectively (6, 7) while the World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes 15% as the acceptable cesarean rate for 2010 (8-10). Some statistics confirm the indication for only 23.2% of the cases of cesarean section and 67.8% of them have been attributed to other causes including fear of delivery pain (59%) and difficulty of previous natural delivery (3.9%). This high rate of cesarean section significantly increases maternal and infant complications (11). Delivery pain control is considered as a goal of midwifery care (4). In recent years, physicians and researchers have come to believe that safe, secure, and effective interventions must be used to reduce the pain intensity in mother and her fetus (12). In addition, the fear of normal delivery pain can be decreased by creating a pleasant experience of delivery (13). There are pharmacological and non-pharmacological methods to relieve the pain. Pharmacological methods include systemic administration of drugs as well as inhalation, general, and regional anesthesia but approaches such as hypnosis, massage, aromatherapy, and reflexology are the non-pharmacological methods (14). Unfortunately, Abstract Objectives: Labor pain is an indispensable component of delivery process; however, excessive pain can reduce uterine contractions and delivery progress rate. This study was executed to compare the effect of aromatherapy with Rosa damascena and lavender essential oils on severity of pain in the first phase of delivery in primiparous women. Materials and Methods: In this clinical trial, 120 primiparous women with a dilatation of 3-4 cm were randomly selected from maternity hospitals of Zahedan and divided into 4 groups: ‘inhalation of essential oils of R. damascena’, ‘lavender’, ‘their combination’, and ‘distilled water’. The participants were asked to inhale the aroma during contraction and the severity of their pain was determined based on the visual scale of pain prior to the intervention and also 30 and 60 minutes after it. The data were analyzed using SPSS, chi-square test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), repeated measure covariance analysis, and Bonferroni correction. Results: Comparison of the mean severity of pain in the 4 groups before the intervention showed a significant difference (P = 0.001). Controlling the pre-test effect demonstrated that the essential oil aromas (R. damascena, lavender, and their combination) significantly reduced the mean severity of pain at 30 and 60 minutes after the intervention relative to distilled water (P = 0.001), however, the difference between the three treatment groups was not significant. Conclusions: The results indicated that aromatherapy using essential oils of lavender, R. damascena, and their combination can reduce the severity of labor pain as an uncomplicated non-pharmacological approach.