An interventional study of Recorded Maternal Voice in Pain, Sedation and Mechanical Ventilation, sponsored by TC Erciyes University. Not yet recruiting at 1 site in Turkey (Türkiye). Open to participants aged 1 Year to 3 Years. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2026-08-10.
Sponsored by TC Erciyes University · Not applicable, Interventional, and Supportive care
Children in the pediatric intensive care unit often experience pain and stress from medical procedures, even while sedated. This study will test whether playing a recording of the child's mother's voice helps reduce pain and the need for sedation medication in children aged 1 to 3 years who are on a breathing machine (mechanical ventilator). Children will be randomly placed into one of two groups: one group will listen to a 10-minute recording of their mother's voice through headphones, while the other group will receive usual care with no recording. Researchers will measure pain and comfort levels, heart rate, oxygen levels, blood pressure, and breathing rate before, during, and after the session to see if listening to the mother's voice makes a difference.
This randomized controlled trial will be conducted in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) of Kayseri City Hospital. Eligible children (aged 1-3 years, intubated, mechanically ventilated, and sedated, with no change in sedation dose in the prior 24 hours) will be assigned to an intervention or control group using stratified block randomization (stratified by age, sex, diagnosis duration, and COMFORT scale score), with simple randomization within blocks performed by an independent researcher.
In the intervention group, each child's mother will be asked to read a children's storybook aloud in a quiet room, and this reading will be recorded (approximately 10 minutes). The recording will then be played to the child once, through wireless over-ear headphones at a safe volume (50-55 dB), during a single morning session. The COMFORT Scale and physiological parameters (heart rate, oxygen saturation, blood pressure, respiratory rate) will be assessed before, during, and after the recording is played. All sessions will be video recorded so that COMFORT Scale scores can also be scored by independent, blinded observers.
Children in the control group will receive standard unit care with no additional intervention, and will be assessed on the same schedule and with the same tools as the intervention group.
Data will be analyzed using IBM SPSS 27.0. Group comparisons will use Chi-square, Independent/Paired Samples t-tests, or Mann-Whitney U/Wilcoxon tests as appropriate, with statistical significance set at p \< 0.05.
10,054 studies on the registry are indexed under Pain; 1,649 are open to participants now.
This study's planned enrollment of 28 is below the median of 66 across 8,493 interventional studies indexed under Pain.
Browse Pain studies →TC Erciyes University is the lead sponsor of 349 studies on the registry; 74 are open to participants now.
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You can keep asking questions during the study, you are told of new information that matters, and you can choose to leave at any time.
Informed consent
Before you join, the study team explains what taking part involves — its purpose, what happens, the risks and possible benefits — and answers your questions, so you can decide freely. Consent is usually recorded on a form (the informed consent form, ICF) signed by you or, where the law allows, by someone legally authorised to decide for you.
You can keep asking questions during the study, you are told of new information that matters, and you can choose to leave at any time.
Explained by clinicaltrials.gg, not part of the registry record. The study team decides who can take part.
Children received a single \~10-minute recording of their mother's voice reading a children's storybook, played once through wireless over-ear headphones at 50-55 dB during a single morning session, with no other interventions during playback.
Behavioral: Recorded Maternal Voice
Children received standard PICU care with no additional intervention. Assessments (COMFORT Scale, physiological parameters, video recording) were performed on the same schedule as the intervention group.
A single \~10-minute audio recording of the child's own mother reading a children's storybook ("The Invisible String," Turkish edition) will be played once through wireless over-ear headphones at a safe listening level (50-55 dB), during a single morning session (10:00-12:00), with no other procedural interventions during playback. The recording will be made in a quiet room by an independent researcher using a digital audio recorder. Want to be notified when Claude responds?
COMFORT Scale
The COMFORT Scale (full behavioral and physiological scale for assessing pain and sedation level in critically ill children) assesses eight items - alertness, calmness, respiratory response, physical movement, blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tone, and facial tension - each scored 1 to 5, yielding a total score ranging from 8 (minimum) to 40 (maximum). Higher scores indicate greater distress/pain and inadequate sedation, while lower scores indicate deeper sedation and better comfort. Scores will be compared between the maternal voice intervention group and the control group.
Time frame: Assessed before (~5 min), during (~10 min), and immediately after (~5 min) the intervention, within a single ~20-minute session on the day of enrollment
Plan to share: No — Individual participant data will not be shared, as this is a single-center thesis study involving a vulnerable pediatric population, and no data sharing infrastructure or consent for external data sharing was established as part of the study protocol.
No publications or documents are linked to this record.
Start is estimated for Aug 2026; primary completion for Dec 2026, 4 months later.
Of 3,731 non-industry interventional studies with no phase under Pain, half reached primary completion within 10 months of starting (the median), counting those still running; a quarter within 4 and three quarters within 23. This study's planned 4 months is below that.
Counting every sponsor, half of 3,830 studies reached it within 10 months; a quarter within 4 and three quarters within 23.
How these figures are worked out, and which studies are left out of them.
This study is not yet recruiting, as verified in Aug 2026. You cannot join it, but the record below documents what was studied.
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