The Effect of the Organized Auditory Stimulation with a Familiar Voice on Pain Intensity and Physiological Indices of Comatose Patients Admitted to the Intensive Care Unit

Pain in the admitted comatose patients is an unpleasant experience, which directly affects the treatment results. One of the newest pain relief techniques is coma stimulation, particularly the auditory stimulation. Therefore, the objective of the present study was to investigate the effect of the organized auditory stimulation with a familiar voice on pain intensity and physiological indices of comatose patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU). The objective of present study was investigating the effect of organized auditory stimulation with a familiar voice on pain intensity and physiological indices of comatose patients admitted to the Intensive Care Unit. This study is a randomized clinical trial, conducted on 40 intubated patients who met inclusion criteria and admitted to ICU. The patients were selected based on convenience sampling and randomly placed into two groups (n=20). In the experimental group, the auditory stimulation was done with the patient’s favorite person for three consecutive days, each day for 15 minutes; the control group received no auditory stimulation. The intended physiologic indices and pain were measured and recorded at similar intervals. The behavioral pain scale was used to determine the pain intensity. Data were analyzed using the statistical tests via SPSS 22 at the significance level lower than 0.05. Two groups were not different in demographic and clinical variables (P>0.05). In the experimental group, pain intensity showed significant reduction after the intervention (P=0.019) while it did not show statistically significant difference in the control group. Furthermore, the physiological indices did not show a statistically significant change in two groups during research and two groups did not show any difference (P>0.05). Auditory stimulation with familiar voice reduces the pain intensity of the patients admitted in ICU, but it does not significantly affect the physiological indices. Conducting modern and low-cost methods effective in reducing the pain of patients admitted in ICU is one of the priorities of the research and evidence-based treatment.