ArticleComparison of abdominal and arm areas in patients receiving subcutaneous heparin in terms of development of pain, hematoma, and ecchymosis
Section snippets
Design
This study was conducted on one group with a quasi-experimental method. Conditions such as pain, ecchymosis, and hematomas that may develop due to injection may vary among individuals. For this reason, each patient formed his/her own control group in the study. The complications developed due to the injections applied to the arm area of each patient were compared with the complications developed due to the injections applied to their abdominal area. Thus, the characteristics of the patient
Results
It was observed that 51.9% of the patients were in the age range of 39–59 years, 61.1% of them were male, 37% were overweight, 46.2% were treated due to vascular diseases, and 57.4% underwent nadroparin calcium treatment (Table 1).
During the administration of injections to abdominal areas, 40.7% of the patients felt no pain, whereas this rate was 31.5% for injections administered to arm areas (P < .01; Table 2).
Ecchymosis developed at the rate of 48.1% in the abdominal area and at 66.7% in the
Discussion
In this study, a statistically significant difference was found between areas only in terms of pain development. The differences observed between the areas in terms of level and duration of pain, as well as the development of ecchymosis and hematoma, were not statistically significant.
The patients experienced very mild pain in both the abdominal and arm areas, but this rate was higher in the arm area. In addition, the mean scores of pain levels were higher in the arm area.
Zeraatkari et al9
Conclusion
Pain developed in significantly more patients in the arm area than in the abdominal area. The mean pain level and the mean pain duration were statistically insignificant. There were no significant differences between the areas in terms of the development of ecchymosis and hematoma.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank directors of hospital, nurses, and the participants. Also they thank the Scientific Research Projects Unit of Inonu University.
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Conflicts of interest: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
Authors' contributions: Both the authors contributed equally to the study design, data collection and analysis, and manuscript writing.