The Effect of Acupressure on Anxiety and Depression Patients With ESRD Who are Undergoing Hemodialysis

— Anxiety and depression are very common symptoms in End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) and acupressure a noninvasive procedure to promote health and good impact to quality of life (QoL) in hemodialysis (HD) patients. This study aimed to investigate the effect of acupressure on the anxiety and depression patients with ESRD who underwent HD. A experimental study with single blind between two groups was conducted at dialysis center in Central Java Province, Indonesia. Subjects with ESRD who undergoing HD were randomly divided into intervention group who received acupressure at K1, ST36, and SP6 acupoint, while the control group received sham acupressure. The both of the groups received treatment three time a week during for four week dialysis. Anxiety and depression was assessed by using Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). For data analysis was used t-test and SPSS software version 22 was used. 96 patients were enrolled and included either in experimental or control group. Acupressure induced significant improvement in anxiety & depression in treated patients compared to control (HADS: 7.653 vs 14.968; p-value: 0.000). Intragroup analysis showed that both groups experienced improvement in only experimental group experienced marked improvement in anxiety and depression. Acupressure could significantly and independently improve anxiety & depression in ESRD patients undergoing HD.