Patients  • Infants and children aged < 5 years | |
Intervention  • Massage therapy | |
Comparators  • Waitlist control  • Placebo  • Positive controls  • Pharmacological treatments  • Combinations of treatments  • Usual care  • Standard care | |
Outcomes  • Children   ▪ Physical outcomes (e.g. pain assessment, pulse rate, length of hospital admission, readmission)   ▪ Psychosocial outcomes (e.g. anxiety, depression, insomnia, fears, behavioural regression)   ▪ Developmental outcomes (e.g. weight gain, intelligence, ability of learning knowledge)  • Caregivers   ▪ Physical outcomes (e.g. blood pressure)   ▪ Psychological outcomes (e.g. economic pressure, anxiety, depression)  • Safety of interventions   ▪ All adverse events (e.g. an increase in anxiety after receiving an intervention, high drop-out rate) | |
Timing  • Studies of any duration | |
Setting  • Studies of any setting | |
Study design  • Systematic reviews with randomised controlled trials |