The Effects of Music on Pain of Heel Blood Sampling in Infants

Pain control is a health problem in the world. Painful procedures on neonates can lead to harmful effects in short and long terms; so, pain control using noninvasive methods such as music can be helpful. In this paper, the effects of music on the pain of infant heel blood sampling in Saveh, Iran was analyzed.
The current research was a clinical trial from the type of single blind and three groups. In this study, 175 infants aged 3-5 days who had the inclusion criteria of the research were considered. These infants were randomly assigned into three groups. For groups 1 and 2, the sound of heartbeat and lullaby songs were played for one minute before and during blood sampling, respectively. Next, the infants’ reactions were compared with the control group. For data gathering, a questionnaire was used to assess the pain of infants. The reliability and validity of the used questionnaire has been proven in various studies. Finally, the obtained data were analyzed using SPSS software.
The obtained results showed that the mean and standard deviation (SD) of the pain score in group 1 were 5.96 and 2.20 and in group 2 they were 4.80 and 2.53, respectively, while the mean and standard deviation of the pain level in the control group were 7.86 and 2.55, respectively. Therefore, the analysis of variance (ANOVA) on the means of the pain level showed that there was a significant difference between them at level 0.05. Also, the mean of the pain level in both groups 1 and 2 was less than the control group and there was a significant difference between the mean of pain level in groups 1 and 2 at level 0.05.
The results showed that both the sound of lullabies and heart beat affected positively on reducing pain during heel lance blood sampling. However, light and rhythmic music had better effects than the heartbeat sound.