Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. This narrative review on pediatric massage literature from the last decade suggests that massage therapy has positive effects on several pediatric conditions.
These include preterm infant growth, psychological problems including aggression, gastrointestinal problems including constipation and diarrhea, painful conditions including burns and sickle cell, muscle tone disorders including cerebral palsy and Down syndrome, and chronic illnesses including diabetes, asthma cancer, and HIV.
Potential underlying mechanisms for the massage therapy effects include increased vagal activity and decreased stress hormones. Limitations of the literature include the need for more randomized controlled trials, longitudinal studies, and underlying mechanism studies. Keywords: pediatric massage therapy, infant massage, child massage, adolescent massage. The pediatric massage therapy research literature was very prolific for many years, but it seems to have been diminishing over the last several years.
This narrative review is derived from literature searches of PubMed and PsychINFO for publications from the last decade β that have the terms pediatric massage or massage and children in their titles. The review includes randomized controlled trial studies, systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Pilot studies and foreign language papers were excluded. Of the papers reviewed, only 48 met the inclusion criteria to be summarized here. Studies from the previous two decades are cited as supportive material.
Potential underlying mechanisms for the massage therapy effects are discussed including increased vagal activity. Limitations of the literature are also reviewed including the need for more randomized controlled trials and longitudinal studies.
