The Effect of 5-Min Mindful Breathing on Pain in Palliative Care Cancer Patients: A Randomized Controlled Study

Context: While pain is a common complaint among palliative cancer patients, there is little research looking into nonpharmacological methods for the reduction of pain in the palliative setting.

Aim: This study aims to study the efficacy of 5-min mindful breathing for rapid reduction of pain in a palliative care setting.

Methods: This is a sub-analysis of the previous randomized controlled study on distress reduction. Sixty patients were recruited and randomly assigned to either the intervention (5-min mindful breathing) or the control (5-min normal listening) group. Participants reported their pain on a 10-item analog scale at baseline, immediately after intervention and 10 min postintervention. Changes in pain scores were further analyzed.

Results: Pain scores decreased for both the intervention and control groups. However, the reduction of pain did not reach statistical difference in both groups (P > 0.05).

Conclusion: Five-minute mindful breathing is a quick and easy to administer therapy but does not have significant effects in terms of pain reduction in palliative settings. Future research and directions are nonetheless suggested and encouraged to look for short-term mindfulness-based therapies on pain reduction for this population.