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The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) in reducing the nausea, vomiting, and anxiety induced by chemotherapy in Japanese patients. Subjects comprised 60 cancer chemotherapy patients who were hospitalized in a cancer center. These subjects were randomly assigned to either the experimental or control group. In addition to routine nursing care, subjects in the experimental received PMR training, while those in the control received contact with the investigator. Results from this study verified the effectiveness of PMR in reducing total scores used to measure nausea, vomiting, and retching; subscale scores of nausea; and subjective feelings of anxiety. The efficacy of PMR to reduce subscale scores of vomiting was not verified, partly due to an extremely low incidence of vomiting.

Nausea and vomiting have been recognized as the most distressing side effects of chemotherapy, and are experienced by 66-91% of chemotherapy patients in Japan. Relaxation measures have been used for patients with various other diagnoses, but this technique has never been applied to patients receiving cancer chemotherapy. This pilot study examined the effects of progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) to reduce nausea, vomiting, and anxiety associated with chemotherapy in Japanese patients. Data for eight subjects who were randomly assigned to a treatment group or a control group were analyzed. Both treatment and control groups showed decrease in nausea and vomiting; therefore, the effect of PMR was not verified. However, there was an average decrease of 2.5 points in state-anxiety scores in the treatment group. In addition, some positive effects of PMR were shown by the subjects in the treatment group.