The effect of progressive relaxation exercises on comfort and anxiety level of patients with lumbar disc herniation surgery

This study aimed to investigate the effect of progressive relaxation exercises on the comfort and anxiety levels of patients undergoing lumbar disc herniation surgery in the neurosurgery clinic.The study's data was conducted as experimental study on patients who will undergo surgery in the neurosurgery clinic of the Ministry of Health Muammer Ağım Gemlik State Hospital between March 2023 and July 2023. The sociodemographic Characteristics Questionnaire, Immobilisation Comfort Scale and State Anxiety Scale were used for data collection. The Shapiro-Wilk normality test, the t-test for the same and different groups mean and standard deviation, Pearson product-moment correlation were used to evaluate the data. In our study, a significant difference was found between the experimental and control groups in terms of state anxiety level (p<0.05). The anxiety level of the group that was given progressive relaxation exercise was lower. In our study, the postoperative comfort level was lower than the preoperative level. There was no significant difference between the experimental and control groups regarding postoperative comfort level (p>0.05). As a result of this study, it was found that progressive relaxation exercise decreased the anxiety level of the patients but had no significant effect on the comfort level. Keywords:Anxiety, comfort level, nursing, lumbar disc herniation, progressive relaxation exercises.