Traditional Chinese Music Therapy as Adjunct Post-operative Pain Management among Chinese Women after Cesarean Delivery

Abstract

Purpose — This study aimed to determine the effects of traditional Chinese music therapy as adjunct post-operative pain management among Chinese women after cesarean delivery. Background — Post-operative pain is common in women after cesarean delivery and has a number of adverse effects. Chinese traditional music therapy as a non-invasive, adjunct therapy of pain has been applied in a variety of gynecological diseases, but the effect on post-operative pain following cesarean delivery needs to be established. Method — A quasi-experimental nonequivalent control group design pretest-posttest design was used to carry out the study. Sixty-six participants who met the eligibility criteria were purposively selected and the first thirty-three participants were assigned into experiment group, and the other thirty-three participants were conveniently assigned into the control group. Numeric Pain Rating Scale (NPRS) was used to measure the post-operative pain on several time periods (at baseline for pre-test, and subsequently at 4 hours, 8 hours, 16 hours, 24 hours for the post-test). Wilcoxon Sign Test and Mann Whitney Test were used to determine significant difference between and within groups. Results — At baseline (pre-intervention), there is no significant difference between the post-operative pain scores between the control group (M=6.67, SD=0.65) and the experiment group (M= 6.70, SD=0.65), p-value is 0.879. However, significant differences in the post-operative pain scores within and between the control and experimental groups were observed after 4 hours (T1), 8 hours (T2), 16 hours (T3) and 24 hours (T4) as compared to baseline (T0) after cesarean delivery (p-value < 0.0005). Conclusion — Traditional Chinese music therapy as adjunct therapy significantly reduces post-operative pain among Chinese women after cesarean delivery.