A Study to Evaluate the Effectiveness of Apitherapy on Oral Mucositis among Cancer Patient undergoing Radiation Therapy in Selected Hospital Rajkot

The reduction of oral mucositis among cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy has an important role to play in enabling effectiveness of Apitherapy intervention as an independent nursing intervention. The objective of the study is to evaluate the effectiveness of Apitherapy in oral mucositis among cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy.

The research design adopted was pre-experimental. The conceptual frame work for this study was based on Weidenbach nursing practice model. The study had been conducted in Nath Lal Parekh cancer research centre, Rajkot.

Non-probability purposive sampling technique had been adopted to select the desired samples. The sample size was 40. As an intervention Apitherapy was administered, 20 ml of honey orally 15 minutes before radiation therapy, then again after intervals of fifteen minutes and six hours after radiation therapy for continuous seven days. The data was collected through WHO Oral mucositis grading scale.

The collected data were analysed by using both descriptive and inferential statistical methods, 't' test was used to evaluate the effectiveness of Apitherapy on oral mucositis among cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy. The obtained 'F' value was 15.45 which showed high significance at 0.001 level. Hence findings of the study revealed that Apitherapy helps in decreasing the degree of severity of oral mucositis among cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy and improving quality of life and there is significant association between selected demographic variables such as age, stage of cancer & effectiveness Apitherapy in reducing oral mucositis among cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy.