Music can ease Patient’s Journey of Recovery

After reviewing evidence from around 7,000 patients, the scientists said people going for surgery should be allowed to choose the music they’d like to hear to maximize the benefit. “Cognitive activities such as listening to music can affect perceived intensity and unpleasantness of pain, enabling patients’ sensation of pain to be reduced”.

“Currently music is not used routinely during surgery to help patients in their post-operative recovery”.

The beneficial effects of music show up when patients listen to music before surgery as well as after surgery, their review has found. Patients exposed to music before, during, and after surgery had the greatest reductions in pain, anxiety, and need for analgesics.

However, these studies have not encouraged the use of music as a day-to-day intervention in surgical practice, likely “because information about effectiveness has not been synthesized and disseminated universally”, according to the authors. Music relaxes our muscles, helps us better focus on any kinds of tasks and eases the pain in our brains, which most of the times radiates to our bodies.

Writing in a linked Comment, Dr Paul Glasziou from Bond University, Queensland, Australia says, “Music is a simple and cheap intervention, which reduces transient discomforts for many patients undergoing surgery”.

Dr. Meads acknowledged that the benefits of music in operating theater are either largely unknown or met with skepticism by medical staffers.

What’s more, music doesn’t necessarily have to be played during surgery, if that proves to be too inconvenient for the doctors.

The researchers also report that the music must not interfere with the surgical team’s ability to communicate during the surgical procedure. However, it turned out that letting the music play even when the patient would be under general anesthetic had a positive influence on the pain levels.

Music levels must be regulated to enable smooth communication between surgeons and their teams. She suggested that music may be played through a background sound system, a pair of headphones or a musical pillow. The researchers noted that there was no difference detected in length of hospital stay, although few studies measured it. None of the studies looked at the effects of music on infections, wound healing rate or costs, either.

They didn’t directly study the effects of music on pain but collated the results of 72 different studies that did. Meads said that they have even carried out a meta-analysis of all published randomized trials.