Dyspnea is one of the reasons why many heart failure patients present to the emergency department. A 75 year-old female presented to a cardiologist with prominent dyspnea and orthopnea. Her heart failure was diagnosed by doctors as New York Heart Association (NYHA) Class III. Progressive increase in episodic shortness of breath forthe past 3 weeks. The patient had been in her normal state of health until 3 weeks ago that she had difficulty catching her breath while walking.The patient got 7 points from the first Borg Dyspnea Scale. The study is a case-report study. Personal Data Form (PDF), Borg Clinical Rating for Dyspnea (Borg CR-10) was evaluated by researcher. Classic foot massage was applied to each foot for a total of 30 minutes, up to 15 minutes, once a day for seven days. Dyspnea was measured after the massage following 10 min of resting. Foot massage was applied by the researcher. Distribution of dyspnea level first and seventh is given in Table 1. Dyspnea level of the patient intervention foot massage decreased to 5.00 from 7.00 at the end of seventh session. Foot massage which is an easy and safe method may be preferably used as a supportive treatment for elevated dyspnea. However, more studies are needed to examine the effect of foot massage on dyspnea level in heart failure patients.
Interobserver reliability and validity of the New York Heart Association Functional Classification (NYHA-FC) in heart failure patients