Effect of Dry Heat Application and Far-infrared Radiation on Perineal Pain and Episiotomy Wound Healing Among Primipara Women

Background: Episiotomy is an incision made in the tissue between the opening of the vagina and the anus area during childbirth. Although episiotomy is a part of normal childbirth, it is not performed in some cases. Since episiotomy has physiological, psychological and socio-economic effects on women, not only the decision to perform it but also how to perform this technique and the quality of its subsequent care are important. Considering the high number of births, episiotomy is probably very common. Considering the advantages of episiotomy in some situations, its selective use is recommended to prevent severe vaginal rupture, pelvic floor damage, urinary and anal incontinence , and intracranial bleeding in the baby. But the side effects of episiotomy include perineal pain , dyspareunia , decreased libido, infection, and bleeding. In the above study, we aim to investigate the effect of auxiliary methods such as dry heat and far infrared radiation therapy on perineal pain and episiotomy wound healing, considering the advantages of selective episiotomy.Methods: In this study, a systematic review of databases including PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, EMBASE, ProQuest and EBSCO using keywords «wound», «laceration», «trauma», «post partum», «perineal pain», «primipara», «episiotomy», were searched with Boolean operators OR and AND, and all observational studies from ۲۰۱۰ to the end of October ۲۰۲۳ were included. There were no restrictions on the language of publication of articles.Results: Finally, ۸ articles that were the most suitable in terms of subject coverage were evaluated, ۶ articles were about the effect of dry heat and ۲ articles were about the effect of far infrared radiation on perineal pain and wound healing. The results of this study showed that in most of the present studies, a significant improvement has been achieved in the healing of the episiotomy wound in terms of perineal redness, perineal edema, ecchymosis, and wound discharge due to dry heat. On the contrary, infrared radiation does not show any advantage in the direction of recovery.Conclusion: The use of dry heat increased episiotomy wound healing among primiparous women and reduced their perineal pain in the early days after delivery, but studies found no additional benefit of postpartum far infrared radiation on primiparous women who They underwent an episiotomy and a second-degree tear of the perineum, they do not show.