The clinical criterion adopted in this study to establish an improvement in pain was a 30% decrease in the scores
obtained with the numerical scale. Thus, pursuant to the numerical scale, the majority of the postnatal women reported pain relief (94Æ7%); of these, 83 (72Æ8%) reported a decrease in perineal pain greater than 50%, 25 (21Æ9%) between 30–50% and a mere six (5Æ3%) below 30% (Table 4). According to the Chi-square test of association, there was no significant difference among the groups, showing that application of the ice pack for 10, 15 and 20 minutes were equivalent to relieve the perineal pain