Music and Audiobooks: Pediatric Pain Relievers?

by Dakota Damschroder
Spring 2015 Intern

We plebeians have known for years about the happiness that specific things can give us. There’s the comfort of a home-cooked meal just like mother made after a long, tiring day; the contentment of rereading a favorite novel while wrapped in a blanket on a cold day; the pumped-up adrenaline that hits after listening to a favorite song on repeat. We figured all of this out long ago, and now it seems as if science has finally caught up with us.

This past January, research from Northwestern Medicine and Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago found startling evidence that listening to music or audiobooks after surgery can significantly reduce a child’s pain. The study, conducted in 2010, separated 54 pediatric postoperative patients from ages 9–14 into three different groups to test the theory. The first group selected a playlist from a list of music that included genres ranging from pop to classical to country. The second group chose an audiobook from a list of options that included The Hobbit and Alice in Wonderland. Both groups listened to their choices for 30 minutes at a time. A third group—the control group—spent 30 minutes in silence.

After the therapy, patients were shown a pain scale, indicated by pictures of faces with different expressions, and then asked to report their pain by pointing to somewhere on the scale. Overall, there was a distinct reduction of pain for all of those receiving the therapy, whereas there was minimal or no reduction for those in the control group. This is awesome—but how did it happen?

What audiotherapy does is quite simple: It distracts patients from the pain. In more scientific terms, it subverts a secondary pathway that lies in the prefrontal cortex of the brain; the pathway is involved with pain memory.

Santhanam Suresh and his daughter Sunitha Suresh, two of the three researchers in charge of the study, were extremely pleased with the results, especially as it meant audiotherapy could potentially become another alternative to the powerful painkillers usually given after surgeries. What they were surprised to find was that audiobooks were just as effective as music in this pain reduction. While everyone loves a good book, and the same principle of distraction through sound applies, music is catchier and more distinctly distracting. However, although it may have been unexpected, it makes complete sense. Some parents of the participants reported that audiobooks were able to calm their children down and allow them to sleep. Does that seem familiar? Sounds like the exact reason why many parents read their children stories at night to get them to sleep.

As of right now, this is the only study specifically on audiotherapy to treat postoperative pain, but the implications are far-reaching. If it works this well on children, could it also work for adults? For pain in general? Try it out; next time you stub your toe, listen to some music. It just might help.

Did You Know?

In addition to the potential use for postoperative pediatric pain management, various sound therapies have been used elsewhere in medicine. Sound therapies have been developed to help improve the symptoms of children with disabilities such as autism, ADD and Down syndrome. The treatment can help improve hearing, focus and general processing abilities. This can potentially help the children in school and with social interactions.