A new study from Case Western Reserve University provides hope for those seeking to lessen the pain of childbirth without medication—music.

Led by Sasitorn Phumdoung, a recent graduate of the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, the study, which appeared in a recent issue of Pain Management Nursing, found that music not only can reduce the sensation of labor pain but also decrease and delay the emotional distress that accompanies it.

Earlier research in an NIH-funded study by Marion Good, associate professor of nursing at the Bolton School and Phumdoung's dissertation adviser, found that this same music reduces pain after surgery.

In her study, Phumdoung looked at two groups of laboring women, age 20-30, who were all having their first babies. One group chose from among five kinds of calming music and listened to it for the first three hours in the hospital after active labor began. The comparison group had the standard care during labor. The study started when they all were 3-4 centimeters dilated.

While the control group did not listen to music, the other women used a tape recorder and earphones to listen to music with 10-minute breaks each hour. Phumdoung measured the women's reports of labor pain before the study began and hourly for the next three hours. She found that during the three hours and at each hourly measure, the music group had significantly less sensation and distress pain than the control group.

Phumdoung also found that the soft music delayed increases in the distress of pain for an hour.

"These findings have significant implications for women preparing to give birth," Good said. "Many women are afraid of the pain associated with childbirth but are reluctant to take medication because of its possible effects on the baby and progress of labor. Soft music does not have these effects and, thus, has the potential to be an effective and widely used alternative to medication for easing pain during early active labor."

The study took place in two hospitals in Phumdoung's home country of Thailand, where she is on the faculty of the College of Nursing at Prince Songkla University. The standard of care at both hospitals was to not give analgesic medication to laboring mothers.

This study was supported by Alpha Mu Chapter of Sigma Theta Tau and the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing Alumni Association.

Return to the online edition of the 9-18-03 Campus News.