Abdominal breathing affects blood pressure in hypertension sufferers

Hypertension is a significant risk factor for heart disease and stroke. This study was conducted to determine the effect of abdominal breathing on blood pressure in a hypertensive patient using the non-pharmacological treatment. This study used a pre-experimental method, which comprises of the one-group pre-test/post-test design. A total of 39 hypertensive respondents taken from a population in Wonokromo, Surabaya were chosen by using simple random sampling technique. Data was analyzed by Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test, with an assigned significance level of ɑ=0.05. The results of this study showed that before abdominal breathing, the systolic blood pressure was 146.41 mmHg, whereas the diastolic blood pressure was 117.43 mmHg. After performing abdominal relaxation, it was 135.64 mmHg and 87.95 mmHg, respectively. Moreover, the results of the Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test showed a p-value of 0.000, illustrating that the results of blood pressure measurement were different before and after conducting the abdominal breathing. Therefore, abdominal breathing is suspected of having the ability to decrease the blood pressure.