Discussion
The aim of this systematic review was to investigate the effect of perioperative music interventions
in children undergoing surgical procedures.
Two studies reported a large significant pain-reducing effect and one study a small non-significant
pain-reducing effect of music between the intervention and control group. Comparing
before and after the intervention within the intervention groups, all studies showed a large and
significant decline in pain, anxiety and distress descriptors.
The present review is the first on this topic that strictly adheres to the methods recommended
in the Cochrane Guidelines for writing a Systematic Review[8]. The findings should be
interpreted in the light of its limitations, most of which are related to the original studies. First,
the overall risk of bias was moderate. Second, there was heterogeneity in the types of music
interventions, the type of surgery across studies, patient populations and outcome measures.
Although the heterogeneity between the studies is a limitation, we were able to calculate the
standardized mean difference per group and to pool the results for the pain and anxiety and
distress descriptor outcomes. Ideally, we would have tried to adjust for the heterogeneity by
performing a meta-regression analysis or subgroup analysis, but the number of studies was
insufficient to perform such analyses. The variability in treatment effect across studies is likely
to be due to the above-mentioned heterogeneity in the types of music interventions, the type of
surgery across studies, patient populations and outcome measures.
Although only three studies could be included in this meta-analysis, the results show a significant
reduction of pain, anxiety and distress descriptors in pediatric surgical patients. Similar
results have been found in other patient populations. Thirteen Cochrane systematic reviews
have been published on music interventions in adults for various indications [3, 6, 13–23]. All
reported positive effects of music on anxiety and distress, pain and quality of life, although it was
noted that the general methodological quality of reviewed studies was moderate to low. Furthermore
authors recommended exploring possibly differential effects of live music therapy versus
recorded music interventions. Apart from the Cochrane reviews, thirty descriptive and systematic
reviews on the effects of music interventions on perioperative pain and anxiety in adults
were published[2, 24–40]. Together the body of evidence suggests that music therapy in the perioperative
setting has the potential to positively affect pain outcomes, anxiety and distress.
For future research we would like to stress the importance of rigorous study protocols, the
use of larger sample sizes and validated outcome measures. For research in children, we would
recommend to pay heed to the Consensus Statement of McGrath et al. regarding appropriate
outcomes measurements in pain research.[41]
Study populations should be more homogenous in terms of age and type of procedure.
Observer bias could perhaps be prevented by recording the patient on video while receiving
the intervention, blind the video images for the allocated intervention and have independent
assessors score the outcome measures using validated measurements while watching the
recordings