A recent surge in the past 25 years of medical music therapy research has caught the attention of hospital administrators, health care professionals, and the media across the country. On the front page of the July 2008 issue, the American Academy of Pediatrics News published Music as medicine: In neonatal and rehabilitation units, operating rooms and oncology departments, music therapy is helping to calm, energize, encourage and soothe patients. Hospitals that are leaders in patient care, medical research and teaching have noticed and embraced medical music therapy. On the west coast, Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA recently released an article about their new “music therapy on wheels” program. A local news station in Orlando wrote about Florida Hospital’s Music Therapy for Preemies program. The same hospital recently published a monograph entitled Music, Medicine & Miracles by the supervising music therapist. NBC News covered a story in 2008 about Deforia Lane, PhD and the Healing Power of Music at the University Hospitals of Cleveland, OH.

Several hospitals list music therapy as a service on their websites. Medical music therapy is available as a treatment that is cost effective, has no side effects, normalizes the environment, works in conjunction with physical, occupational, and speech therapy goals, and results in positive physiological and behavioral changes. You can read more about NICU music therapy in Dr. Jayne Standley’s book Music Therapy with Premature Infants: Research and Developmental Interventions.

Here are 9 specific, research-based ways that music therapy makes a stay in the NICU easier for the baby, parents, staff, and hospital. The articles are published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals. The referenced studies have shown statistical significance with regards to the specific physiological or behavioral measure.

1. Increases oxygen saturation levels. (Flowers, McCain, and Hilker, 1999; Moore, Gladstone, and Standley, 1994; Cassidy & Standley, 1995; Coleman, et al, 1997; Standley & Moore, 1995, Collins & Kuck 1991)
2. Reduces infant distress behaviors. (Whipple, 2000; Collins & Kuck 1991)
3. Increases infant self-regulatory behaviors. (Arnon et al, 2006)
4. Decreases length of hospital stay. (Caine, 1992; Standley, 1998)
5. Encourages appropriate parent/infant interaction. (Whipple, 2000)
6. Accelerates weight gain. (Coleman et al 1997; Standley, 1998c)
7. Increases non-nutritive sucking. (Standley, 2000)
8. Increases feeding rate. (Standley, 2003)
9. Earlier successful bottle feeding result. (Cevasco & Grant, 2005; Standley et al, 2005)

Here is the research that backs up those 9 claims.

Arnon, S., Shapsa, A., Forman, L., Regev, R., Bauer, S., Litmanovitz, I., & Dolfin, T. (2006). Live music is beneficial to preterm infants in the neonatal intensive care unity environment. Birth, 33(2), 131-136.

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