Music therapy versus recorded music in pain treatment in a pediatric intensive care unit: a systematic review.
Pain Management Complementary Therapies; Pain Management; Intensive Care Units, Paediatric; Music.
Children and adolescents have complex pain response mechanisms related to
growth and development. Studies on the prevalence of pain during
hospitalization, especially in Pediatric Intensive Care Units (PICUs), alert health
professionals and researchers to proper management, reducing the impact on
physical, cognitive and emotional health. Since pharmacological therapy to
relieve pain in PICUs presents risks related to adverse events, non-
pharmacological therapies such as live music (music therapy) and recorded
music represent safe and low-cost alternatives. However, there is a need to
assess whether the personalization of music achieved by live music is more
effective than recorded music. Given this problem, the aim was to conduct a
systematic review study supported by the following research question: “Is music
therapy more effective than recorded music in reducing pain in pediatric
patients admitted to the PICU?” The search strategy was structured using the
Medical Subject Headings: P (Pediatric Intensive Care Units), I (Music
Therapy), C (Music), O (Pain Management), T (Clinical Trial). The search for
articles will be carried out using the electronic databases: Academic Search
Premier, Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Cochrane
Library, Excerpta Medica Database, Virtual Health Library, Medical Literature
Analysis and Retrieval System Online, Science-Direct, Scopus, Web of Science
Core Collection and grey literature. There will be no restrictions on language or
date of publication. The studies will be selected by two independent reviewers
and the level of disagreement will be measured using the Kappa statistical test.
The eligibility criteria will be pediatric PICU patients who have received
exclusive intervention with music therapy and/or recorded music to reduce pain
and whose methodologies have carried out clinical trials. The variables to be
collected using an instrument used in a previous study will be classified as
continuous or categorical. For continuous variables, the number of study
subjects, mean and standard deviation of each participant group will be
collected. For categorical variables, the number of pediatric patients who had
the outcome and the total number of patients in each group will be collected.
The critical evaluation of the studies will also consider the RoB risk of bias tool.
The data will be synthesized through meta-analysis. The heterogeneity of the
studies will be assessed using the dispersion of the confidence intervals of the
meta-analysis and the I-squared (I2). The writing of the review will follow the
systematic review writing guide (PRISMA-P) and the results will be published by
submitting the review protocol and its results to journals. The protocol is
registered at Prospero under code: CRD42024571132.