The effect of Holy Quran voice on reducing pain and anxiety during the labor: a literature review

vaginal delivery is one of the most beautiful events in every woman's life, although it is a tense reality. The labor pain is the furthermost severe pain which women encounter during their lifetime. Therefore, reduce of labor pain using supporting methods can lead to increase maternal tendency to vaginal delivery. As in many developed countries, the management of labor pain, as well as the transformation of childbirth into a pleasant experience, has become one of the main challenges of the health system. Therefore, this study was conducted with the aim of reviewing the effect of Holy Quran voice on pain and anxiety in childbirth. In this literature review study, English and Persian articles were searched in four national databases (SID, Iranmedex IranDoc and Magiran) and five international databases (Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, Scopus, Science-Direct and Google Scholar) up to May 27 15, 2018. The following keywords were used in search strategy: music therapy, voices The Holy Qur'an, labor pain and labor anxiety. Our literature review showed that hearing of Holy Quran sounds has positive remedy effects on stress, anxiety, fear of delivery, pain intensity and duration of delivery. Moreover it is effective on greater maternal comfort, better tolerance of labor pain, improvement of vital signs of mother and her fetus, increase of maternal satisfaction with vaginal delivery and prevent of unnecessary cesareans. The findings of this study suggest that listen to sound of the Quran could be an easy, inexpensive and non-invasive technique to reduce the anxiety, pain, labor time and cesarean, and also for more mother's convenience and preventing unnecessary section. Providing the suitable conditions and facilities in hospitals can be a good guarantee to apply this method.