The effects of music therapy on gross motor functions, pain and level of functional independence in children with cerebral palsy

Abstract

Aim: In this study, we aimed to observe the effects of music therapy on gross motor functions, pain, and functional independence measurement in children with cerebral palsy(CP). Material and Method: One hundred and twenty children with CP between 5-11years of age,were randomly divided into a music therapy(MT)+Neurodevelopmental techniques(NDT) group and only NDT group. The children listened to Classical music disc for 45 minutes. Children were treated by NDT while listening to this music. Children were evaluated with Gross Motor Function Measurement (GMFM-88), WeeFIM for functional independence measurement,Wong-Baker faces pain rating scale (FACES) for pain intensity before, at the end of treatment and after 3 months of treatment. The treatments were given 3 times every week, and totally 15 treatments were applied for 5 weeks. Results: GMFM, functional independence and pain were also improved in Group MT+NDT. The differences in improvement of creeping and kneeling, standing, and walking were significant between the two groups (p<0.001),showing the effect in Group MT+NDT was better than that in Group NDT. Discussion: MT, which is applied additionally in the treatment of children with spastic CP, reduces the pain of children more and increases the gross motor functions and functional capacities according to the rehabilitation program applied alone.

Music Intervention for Pain Control in the Pediatric Population: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…A total of 5601 participants in 38 articles, published between 2006 and 2022, were included (Table 1). Among all articles, eight articles were conducted in America [31][32][33][34][35][36][37], 14 in Europe [38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51], 13 in Asia [52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65], and three in Africa [11,66,67]. Most studies (n = 33) had a parallel randomized controlled design, and five studies [39,45,48,53,62] had a cross-over randomized controlled design.…”

“…The mean age of the participants ranged from a few days of birth to teenage years. To be specific, two articles included adolescents [43,52], 12 newborns [31,39,41,48,49,53,56,[60][61][62]64,65], and 24 infants and children [11,[32][33][34][35][36][37][38]42,[44][45][46][47]50,51,54,55,[57][58][59]63,66,67]. On the other hand, 29 studies were conducted in the hospital setting [11,[32][33][34]36,[38][39][40][41][44][45][46][47]…”

“…On the other hand, 29 studies were conducted in the hospital setting [11,[32][33][34]36,[38][39][40][41][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][53][54][55][56][58][59][60][61][62][64][65][66][67], and 9 in the clinic setting [31,35,37,42,43,51,52,57,63]. As for the type of pain, 18 articles examined participants with prick pain (heel lance, intravenous (IV) insertion, immunization, acupuncture, and lumbar puncture) [33,35,37,39,41,43,48,51,53,54,56,…”

“…As for the type of pain, 18 articles examined participants with prick pain (heel lance, intravenous (IV) insertion, immunization, acupuncture, and lumbar puncture) [33,35,37,39,41,43,48,51,53,54,56,[58][59][60][62][63][64][65], 8 participants with procedural pain (emergency procedural, retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), wound care, peripherally inserted central catheter (PICC), orthodontic procedure, and continuous positive airway pressure (C-PAP)) [11,31,32,49,50,52,61,67], 4 participants with chronic pain (rehabilitation, illness pressure) [42,45,57,66], and 8 participants with postoperative pain [34,36,38,40,44,46,47,55]. Among all 38 studies, the participants listened to classical music in 11 articles [32,34,[39][40][41][42]44,46,…”

“…Additionally, in one article [53], two groups of participants listened to either kids' music or world music, and thus this article was separated into two datasets. As for the listening instruments, 9 articles used headphones [32,[34][35][36]38,44,53,63,65], 4 used earphones [46,54,55,59], 19 used speakers [11,31,33,[39][40][41][42][47][48][49]51,56,58,[60][61][62]64,66], and 4 used live performance [37,45,50,67]. In one article [43], participants listened to music using either headphones or speakers, and thus this study was separated into two datasets.…”