Controlling Acute Post-operative Pain in Iranian Children with using of Music Therapy

Background: Despite the development of pediatric postoperative pain management and use of analgesic/narcotic drugs, postoperative pain remains as a common problem. Some studies suggested, the most effective approach to controlling immediate postoperative pain may include a combination of drug agents and nondrug methods. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of music therapy on the acute postoperative pain in Iranian children.  Materials and Methods: A quasiexperimental, repeated measure design was used. In this study, 63 children were placed in the music and control groups. In the music group, pain intensity was measured before start intervention (baseline). Then, this group listened to two nonspeech music for 20 minutes. Then, pain intensity was measured with numeric rating scale, immediately after intervention, 1 hour, 3 hours and 6 hours after intervention, respectively. Also, in the control group, pain intensity was measured in times similar to music group. Results: The mean of pain intensity did not significantly different between the 2 groups at baseline (P>0.05). The results of repeated measure ANOVA showed that, trend of pain intensity between 2 groups was significant (P<0.05), so that pain intensity in the music group had more decrease than control group. Also, mean of used narcotic (Pethidine) in the music group was significant lower than the control group (P<0.05).                                                                                                           Conclusion: The current study showed that music therapy as a nondrug, cheap and easy method, can improve acute postoperative pain in children and also inducing lower use of narcotic in children.