Adults aren’t the only ones whose post-surgical pain can be alleviated by listening to music. Children can benefit, too—but they want to control the playlist.
Outliers earlier reported on the soothing effects of jazz, which was found to lower post-surgery heart rates. Silence also can lead to less pain in adults. But researchers now say pediatric patients who listened to 30 minutes of music or books were able to shake off post-surgery pain, according to results published recently in Pediatric Surgery.
During the study at Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, 9- to 14-year-olds reported significantly less pain after major surgery when they listed to a half hour of music or audio stories of their choice. The study’s authors are looking for ways to reduce the use of opioid pain medications, which can cause respiratory problems for children.
The key to the study was letting patients choose what they wanted to hear, so the distraction from pain was something they enjoyed rather than something to which they were subjected, said Dr. Santhanam Suresh, chair of pediatric anesthesiology at Lurie. He conducted the experiment with his daughter, Sunitha Suresh, a fourth-year student at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who designed it as an undergraduate.
About 60 pediatric patients were involved in the study, equally divided into groups listening to popular music, stories or simulated silence. Children who listened to 30 minutes of silence did not see any reduction in pain, unlike in adults.
