Effect of Music on Outcomes of Birth Asphyxia: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Abstract

Introduction Birth asphyxia may cause neuro-developmental impairment in the affected newborns especially those who had hypoxic–ischemic encephalopathy. Music therapy has been observed to help in reducing pain and stress in newborns and improve neurodevelopmental outcome. Objectives The objective of this study is to determine the effects of music therapy on the outcomes of birth asphyxia. Methods A randomized controlled trial involving 3095 newborns born between January 2013 and August 2019 with birth asphyxia was conducted in the neonatal intensive care unit of Burdwan Medical College. They were distributed in two groups—A (received music therapy along with coventional management) and B (only received conventional management), using computer-generated randomization. Pain score was assessed during any painful procedure and the neurodevelopmental outcome was measured at 3rd, 6th, 12th, 18th and 24th months. p < 0.01 was considered statistically significant. Results A total of 3095 newborns were included with a mean gestation of 34.3 ± 2.1 weeks and 56.7% of them were male. Mean hospital stay, oxygen dependency, requirement of mechanical ventilation and incidence of apnea were significantly lesser among newborns of group A. Newborns of group B showed a significantly higher mean pain score, whereas newborns in Group A exhibited significantly greater mental and motor neurodevelopmental quotients. Conclusions Music therapy was observed to help in reducing hospital stay, oxygen dependency, incidences of apnea, pain during procedures and also resulted in better neurodevelopmental outcome. However, before generalizing the findings, further multi-centric research should be undertaken.

Music Intervention for Pain Control in the Pediatric Population: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…A total of 5601 participants in 38 articles, published between 2006 and 2022, were included (Table 1). Among all articles, eight articles were conducted in America [31][32][33][34][35][36][37], 14 in Europe [38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51], 13 in Asia [52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65], and three in Africa [11,66,67]. Most studies (n = 33) had a parallel randomized controlled design, and five studies [39,45,48,53,62] had a cross-over randomized controlled design.…”

“…The mean age of the participants ranged from a few days of birth to teenage years. To be specific, two articles included adolescents [43,52], 12 newborns [31,39,41,48,49,53,56,[60][61][62]64,65], and 24 infants and children [11,[32][33][34][35][36][37][38]42,[44][45][46][47]50,51,54,55,[57][58][59]63,66,67]. On the other hand, 29 studies were conducted in the hospital setting [11,[32][33][34]36,[38][39][40][41][44][45][46][47]…”

“…On the other hand, 29 studies were conducted in the hospital setting [11,[32][33][34]36,[38][39][40][41][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][53][54][55][56][58][59][60][61][62][64][65][66][67], and 9 in the clinic setting [31,35,37,42,43,51,52,57,63]. As for the type of pain, 18 articles examined participants with prick pain (heel lance, intravenous (IV) insertion, immunization, acupuncture, and lumbar puncture) [33,35,37,39,41,43,48,51,53,54,56,…”

“…As for the type of pain, 18 articles examined participants with prick pain (heel lance, intravenous (IV) insertion, immunization, acupuncture, and lumbar puncture) [33,35,37,39,41,43,48,51,53,54,56,[58][59][60][62][63][64][65], 8 participants with procedural pain (emergency procedural, retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), wound care, peripherally inserted central catheter (PICC), orthodontic procedure, and continuous positive airway pressure (C-PAP)) [11,31,32,49,50,52,61,67], 4 participants with chronic pain (rehabilitation, illness pressure) [42,45,57,66], and 8 participants with postoperative pain [34,36,38,40,44,46,47,55]. Among all 38 studies, the participants listened to classical music in 11 articles [32,34,[39][40][41][42]44,46,…”

“…Additionally, in one article [53], two groups of participants listened to either kids' music or world music, and thus this article was separated into two datasets. As for the listening instruments, 9 articles used headphones [32,[34][35][36]38,44,53,63,65], 4 used earphones [46,54,55,59], 19 used speakers [11,31,33,[39][40][41][42][47][48][49]51,56,58,[60][61][62]64,66], and 4 used live performance [37,45,50,67]. In one article [43], participants listened to music using either headphones or speakers, and thus this study was separated into two datasets.…”