Objectives: Most patients bearing chronic renal failure (CRF) in end-stage renal disease (ESRD) need hemodialysis to survive. Although there are many advanced hemodialysis equipment, some of them still have complications. Nausea is general complicacy during hemodialysis, which leads to unsightly feeling. In this regard, the present study was conducted to investigate the effect of acupressure on the severity of nausea during hemodialysis.

Materials and Methods: The current single-blind clinical trial was conducted on 60 patients in the dialysis wards of some selected hospitals affliated to Semnan University of Medical Sciences in Iran. The sampling method was easy, accessible, and purposive and the order of interventions was selected randomly. In addition, the nausea severity was measured during hemodialysis in one group in three different conditions of routine care, placebo administration, and acupressure. The verbal numerical rating scale was used to measure the nausea severity. To determine the difference in the mean of nausea severity in different conditions, repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) test was used, followed by applying the post hoc test of Bonferroni for two-by-two comparisons in different conditions.

Results: The mean of nausea severity was 1.15±2.08 in the routine care while it was 0.55±1.44 and 0.05±0.29 in placebo administration and acupressure conditions. The fndings of the repeated measures ANOVA test represented a remarkable difference among the mean severity of nausea in different conditions (P<0.001, F=11.61). Further, there was a signifcant difference between the mean of nausea severity in routine care compared to placebo administration (P=0.024) and acupressure (P<0.001) conditions. Finally, a signifcant difference was observed between the mean of nausea severity in placebo administration and acupressure conditions (P=0.030).

Conclusions: The results demonstrated that acupressure was effective in attenuating the severity of nausea during hemodialysis thus using acupressure can be suggested to reduce nausea during hemodialysis.