Studying the Benefits of Massage

As a healing aid, hands-on therapy is being studied to win over skeptics to understand its healing benefits
Longmont United Hospital in Colorado has a massage therapist on staff around the clock for patients who need or request it. At Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, 11 massage therapists are on a staff team and work with hundreds of patients. Yet, those who advocate massage therapy say that some hospital administrators are wary of introducing such a “touchy-feely” element to clinical practice.
“Clearly there are medical benefits to massage,” said Dr. Gregory P. Fontana, a cardiothoracic surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. In a study of heart patients measuring the effectiveness of nontraditional therapies, such as massage, in helping speed recovery after surgery, ninety-five percent of the 50 massage patients reported that massage was a “very important” part of their recovery, according to Fontana.
However, many doctors remain skeptical of the research suggesting a medical benefit to massage, saying more rigorous studies are needed. There are several new studies underway. Some are being funded by NIH’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Tiffany Field, director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami School of Medicine, is working on two NIH-funded studies: one measuring the effect of massage on premature babies; the other measuring the effect of massage on pregnant mothers who are depressed. Currently, Memorial Sloan Kettering researchers are undergoing studies that measure how effective massage can be in alleviating the pain of cancer patients.
Advocates of massage therapy hope that the scientific and medical research will continue to support the benefits, safety, and cost-effectiveness of massage treatments. (Summarized from Los Angeles Times, Nov. 22, 2004, pp. F1+; Copyright © 2004 Los Angeles Times, Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.