The Effect of Massage Therapy on the Quality of Life of Cancer Patients in the Indonesia Zakat Initiative Foundation (IZI) Semarang

Background and aim: Cancer is the second cause of death after cardiovascular disease, where the symptoms are almost uncontrolled in 70% to 80% of cancer cases, especially when the healing phase has ended and the patient has entered the palliative stage. Cancer itself has been recognized as a disease that has serious physical and psychological consequences for sufferers. Efforts are being made to improve the quality of life of cancer patients, one of which is by anticipating physical and psychological symptoms. To reduce the side effects of modern therapy, many breast cancer sufferers use complementary therapies. One of the complementary interventions that can be given to cancer patients is therapeutic massage. This therapeutic massage can help reduce the side effects felt by cancer patients after undergoing therapy to determine the effect of massage therapy on the quality of life of cancer patients at the IZI Halfway House (Indonesian Zakat Initiative), Semarang. Materials and methods: This type of research is experimental with adesign statisticalgroup comparison withdesign pre and post test control group design. The samplingused techniquenon probability sampling with quota sampling, the instrument used in this study was a quality of life questionnaire.
Results: The results showed that there was an effect of massage therapy on cancer patients on the quality of life of patients before and after massage therapy. The average respondent before the massage therapy was good quality of life from 2 to 6 respondents and respondents with sufficient quality of life from 4 to 6 respondents. Conclusion: The results showed that there was an effect of massage therapy in cancer patients on the quality of life of patients before and after therapeutic massage.