Comparative Efficacy of Progressive muscle relaxation and Breathing exercises in Hypertension: A systematic review

Progressive Muscle Relaxation and breathing exercises are most researched upon non-pharmacological modalities for the treatment and prevention of Hypertension. There are various true and quasi-experimental studies published regarding the effectiveness of these two therapies on patients with hypertension. However, a comprehensive systematic review regarding these therapies is lacking. The systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted to understand the comparative efficacy of Progressive muscle relaxation an Breathing exercises on patients with hypertension. We conducted a systematic review on RCTs and quasi-experimental studies with pretest post-test control group design on patients with hypertension published between 2008- 2018 in databases of PUBMED/MEDLINE, AMED (OVID) , CINAHL Plus ,Cochrane CENTRAL Trials, PsycINFO , ERIC, ScienceDirect ,SciencePubCo ,Scopus database, JSTOR ,ProQuest , Google Scholar , Semantic Scholar and Clinicaltrials.gov for these two therapies. Overall most of the studies reported decrease in physiological parameters which is extremely encouraging. PMR was seen to be most effective among the two therapies in lowering blood pressure of patients with hypertension.