PURPOSE
The Purpose of this study was to elucidate the effects of aromatherapy massage on the preoperative anxiety of stomach cancer patients.
METHOD
The research design was a nonequivalent control group non synchronized design. The data were collected during the period of October 2 to December 30, 2005 at H Hospital in Seoul. The subjects were 40 patients who were operated under general anesthesia for stomach cancer. State anxiety, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, pulse rate were measured on the day before surgery and the preoperative period. Data were analyzed by chi-square test, independent t-test, paired t-test.
RESULTS
Hypothesis 1 that the level of preoperative state anxiety of the experimental group who received aromatherapy massage is lower than that of the control group who did not received aromatherapy was supported(p=.004). Hypothesis 2 the physiological index of the preoperative anxiety of the experimental group who received aroma-therapy is lower than that of the control group who did not received aromatherapy.
CONCLUSION
According to these results, aromatherapy hand massage can be regarded as a partially effective nursing intervention that relives anxiety of surgical patients and decreases the blood pressure level.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a hand massage program on anxiety, vital sign and pain in clients with ischemic heart disease. The design utilized for this study was quasi-experimental with a nonequivalent control group non-synchronized design The subjects were fifty-four patients, twenty-eight for the experimental and twenty-six for the control group, who were admitted with ischemic heart diease at a cardiac intensive care unit in K medical center of K university. This study was carried out from May, 1999 to March, 2000. The level of anxiety and pain measured by Visual Analogue Scale, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure and pulse rate were measured before and after hand massage, the state of Anxiety was measured by the Spielberger (1970) scale at admission and after hand massage for three days. The collected data were processed by using the SPSS PC program and analyzed using X2 -test and t-test. The result of this study are as follows: 1. The scores of VAS anxiety and State of anxiety of the experimental group were lower than those of the control group. 2. The degree of systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure and pulse rate of the experimental group were lower than that of the control group. 3. The score of VAS pain of the experimental group was lower than that of the control group. The results suggested that hand massage can decrease VAS anxiety, State of anxiety, vital signs and VAS pain of patients who were admitted with ischemic heart disease at cardiac intensive care unit Therefore, it is proposed that hand massage is an appropriate nursing intervention to relieve anxiety of the patients who were admitted with ischemic heart disease at a cardiac intensive care unit.