Music Reduces Postoperative Pain Perception in Male Patients after Abdominal Surgery under General Anesthesia

Background: Perioperative pain after abdominal surgery is difficult to manage. Despite the advent of multimodal analgesia techniques, the opioids remain the cornerstone of treatment. Since the opioids' adverse effects are of concern immediate postoperatively, music as a modality that would influence human behavior, is of interest as an adjunct for acute pain management. Our hypothesis was that listening to instrumental music during the perioperative period reduces the pain level and decreases the use of opioids within the first 23 hours after the surgery. Methods: The study was designed as randomized clinical trial, including 54 males who underwent abdominal surgery under general anesthesia. One group was allocated to music therapy intra and postoperatively (G1), and the other was the control group (G2), without music therapy. The statistical analysis for each of the response variable, blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen saturation, visual analogue scale (VAS) score and morphine equivalents (ME), was based on a linear regression analysis accounting for group and time differences and adjusting for covariates (age, height, weight) if necessary (statistically significant). Results: Our study results show a statistically significant difference regarding the mean VAS measurements between the two groups before and after music therapy on arrival in the Postanesthesia Care Unit (PACU) [ 2.4; CI 95% 1.39-3.35 versus 4.1 CI 95% 2.77-5.53], 30 minutes [ 3; CI95% 2.21-3.87 vs 5.48; CI95% 4.34-6.62] and 23 hours later [2.15; CI95% 1.38-2.91 vs 4.37;CI 95% 3.51-5.24] , respectively (Table 2). There was no statistically significant difference in blood pressure (systolic and diastolic), heart rate, oxygen saturation (SpO2), and opioid consumption between the two groups at the three points in time when measurements were done. Conclusions: In this study, a short perioperative exposure to music was effective in reducing the pain perception (as measured by VAS method) but not the opioid consumption in the first 23 hours in male patients after abdominal surgery.