Labor pain control by aromatherapy: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.

BACKGROUND: Aromatherapy is a treatment method that applies fragrant extracts from herbal plants, existed long ago in medical history as a major treatment approach and now used as an auxiliary treatment and sometimes a major treatment for pain and stress management, including those that occur in labor.

AIM: We aimed to conduct a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials of the effectiveness of aromatherapy on labor pain and duration reduction.

METHODS: We searched the Pubmed, EMBASE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Google Scholar and Clinicaltrials.gov for randomized controlled trials investigating the effectiveness of aromatherapy on labor pain and duration.

RESULTS: A total of 17 trials with low-risk labor parturient women were included for meta-analysis using the Review Manager 5.3. Meta-analyses showed that aromatherapy reduced labor pain in the transition phase and the duration of active phase and third stage labor; a trend toward shortened duration was observed in the second stage. Also, aromatherapy had no influences on emergency caesarean section, membrane rupture, and spontaneous labor onset.

CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that aromatherapy is effective in reducing labor pain and duration, and generally safe to the mothers. However, due to the heterogeneity across trials in some of the outcomes, further trials with device-based pain measurements, larger sample size, and more stringent design, should be conducted before strong recommendation.