Music therapy and pain relief after abdominal surgery

Abstract

Opioids may cause several side effects in post-operative patients; therefore non pharmacological interventions may be explored in order to reduce the post-operative pain. This dissertation will investigate the effect of music on pain induced by post-operative abdominal surgeries. The research question is; 'Does listening to music after abdominal surgery reduce the post-operative pain?' The population of this study consisted of male and female patients aged between 18-75 years who have done an abdominal surgery. The intervention consisted of patients listening to music during the post-operative period and the comparison another group of patients which did not listening to music during the same post-operative period. Outcomes are expected to be reduction in pain, analgesia consumption and improvement on patients' wellbeing. The inclusion criteria included participants who had abdominal surgery and listened to music only during the post-operative period. Exclusion criteria included studies not in English, population under 18 years, and studies which assessed other interventions with music on the same patients. The literature search yielded five papers; four randomised control trials and one quasi experiment. These studies were appraised by using the critical appraising skills program (CASP) tools of randomised control trials. The main results from the literature review indicated that most of the time, listening to music during the post-operative period reduced the post-operative pain levels. Moreover in two studies music improved the patients' post operative experience. The main conclusions indicate that music reduces post-operative pain in some way. This intervention should be explored in depth and the patients should be given the option to listen to music during the post-operative phase. The implications and most important recommendations for research, practice, education and management are to educate the nurses about music intervention and start testing music intervention on a small scale of patients who had abdominal surgery.