Introduction: With the increasing use of cardiac catheterization and its accompanied complications such as urinary retention, finding out a safe and non-invasive way to solve this problem is essential. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of warm compresses on acute urinary retention following cardiac catheterization in male patients of military hospitals.

Materials and Methods: In this study 72 patients with cardiac catheterization case selected by simple sampling and assigned equally to 2 experimental and control groups. The study was based on a visual scale measuring (VAS) of the elimination time of urinary retention, severity of urinary retention before and after the intervention. Descriptive and analytical statistics of the Data were performed by SPSS (version 21). The results were statistically analyzed with T-test and P-value under 0.05.

Results: The results showed a significant difference in the severity of urinary retention of warm compresses group before and after the intervention, whereas the control group showed no significant difference. In addition, comparison of the removal time of urinary retention, showed the positive effect of the warm compresses intervention (p < 0.05).

Discussion and Conclusion: Given the positive effects of the warm compresses in relieving the severity of urinary retention and its elimination, in order to relieve the urinary retention, we suggest to use it prior to the catheterization of the supra-pubic area.