SEPTEMBER 24, 2024
Originally published by our sister publication Anesthesiology News
Playing music before, during and after a surgical procedure can substantially reduce emergence agitation among pediatric patients, according to abstract P-65.
Children who experience emergence agitation have been shown to exhibit inconsolability, incoherence and thrashing, which can lead to self-injury, line and monitor loss, and parent/guardian dissatisfaction, and can experience increased rates of postsurgical behavioral
Originally published by our sister publication Anesthesiology News
Playing music before, during and after a surgical procedure can substantially reduce emergence agitation among pediatric patients, according to abstract P-65.
Children who experience emergence agitation have been shown to exhibit inconsolability, incoherence and thrashing, which can lead to self-injury, line and monitor loss, and parent/guardian dissatisfaction, and can experience increased rates of postsurgical behavioral problems.
“Anyone is at risk for emergence agitation, but kids are particularly prone to it,” said lead study author Benjamin Sanofsky, MD, an instructor in the pediatric anesthesia group at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, in Missouri. “Due to this, our PACUs can often be an unhappy place for a lot of kids.”
Addressing this problem is something that pediatric anesthesiologists have been looking to do for a long time, he noted.
“Our focus has mostly been on pharmacologic approaches, which have shown some success,” Sanofsky said. “But even with lots of different pharmacologic ways to mitigate emergence agitation, it’s still extremely common in the younger patients.”
Consequently, interest rose in studying nonpharmacologic ways to try to prevent emergence agitation. One approach was music.
Previous work that Sanofsky conducted while working as an intern at the Institute for Music and Neurological Function, in Mount Vernon, N.Y., had interested him in the healing powers of sound.
To test how personalized music (PM)—or music that is familiar to the patient—may affect patients emerging from anesthesia, the multiple-site, prospective randomized controlled pilot trial investigated the effects of providing PM to children 3 to 9 years of age who were undergoing elective ear, nose and throat procedures. Patients in the PM arm were played self- or family-chosen music perioperatively via a Bluetooth speaker.
A total of 51 patients participated in the study: 29 in the PM group and 22 in the control group. The Pediatric Anesthesia Emergence Delirium scale was used as the primary outcome measure to assess for emergence agitation, and scores were collected after each surgical procedure.
The researchers found a large reduction in the incidence of emergence agitation among patients who received PM (31%) versus those in the control group (59%).
“I think all of us know that music has a positive effect on people, but to be able to measure it and to be able to use those measurements to better understand it was the purpose of this pilot,” Sanofsky said. “Hopefully down the road, we can look further into why music can be so beneficial and leverage this to help our patients.”
By Ethan Covey
Sanofsky reported no relevant financial disclosures.
