Music Based Remediation Therapy as an Adjunct to Conventional Physiotherapy Treatment for Primary and Secondary Impairments in Patients with Traumatic Brain Injury and Stroke: A Systematic Review

Stroke is a second leading cause of death and major cause of long term disability whereas traumatic brain injury being a disabling health condition. Music therapy is a therapeutic application of music to cognitive, behaviour, sensory and motor dysfunction. To examine the effects of music therapy as an adjunct intervention with conventional treatment versus conventional treatment alone and other therapies on cognition, behaviour, upper extremity function, fine motor skills and activities of daily living. We have searched in major indexing cites like PubMed, Google Scholar, Cochrane Library, Ovid SP, DOAJ, Scopus, and Pedro. We had searched in music therapy journals and references databases. Three review authors independently assessed the methodological quality and extracted the data. We have presented the result using ‘F value’ and ‘P value’ as all the outcome measures is measured by respective scales. We included 11 studies (469 participants). The results suggested that the music therapy had shown its effect in improving several outcomes as fine motor control, cognition (verbal memory, focused attention), depression, kinematic parameters such as upper extremity function. There was insufficient data to examine the effects of music therapy on other outcome measures. Music therapy is beneficial for some of cognitive and behavioral domains as well as for physical outcome upper extremity with fine motor skills. Some more evidence is needed for further analysis of the effects of the music therapy on other outcome measure in patients with TBI and stroke as well as to bring out the same in clinical practice. Keywords: CVA, neurological music therapy, head injury Cite this Article M. Uttam, H. Yadav, D. Midha. Music based remediation therapy as an adjunct to conventional physiotherapy treatment for primary and secondary impairments in patients with traumatic brain injury and stroke: a systematic review. Research and Reviews: Journal of Neuroscience. 2016; 6(1): 1–9p.