New research suggests listening to your favourite music before, during and after surgery can reduce pain and anxiety – even if you’re under general anaesthetic and can’t hear a thing.
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The lead author, Dr Catherine Meads, said Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album had helped soothe her pain three hours after hip surgery in April.
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”. Music even worked when patients were under general anesthetic, the researchers found.
An analysis of 20 operations by Imperial College London found that nurses struggle to hear what equipment was being asked for while anaesthetists mistook the beat of the music for patient’s pulse rate.
Even though music is non-invasive, safe and affordable, it isn’t routinely used around the time of surgery, perhaps because of ignorance or skepticism about its effectiveness, a previous Dutch study suggested. The right music can also have a “positive impact” on motivation and physical performance, increasing endurance, power, productivity and strength.
The findings confirmed that playing music produced significant benefits, especially when patients were able to choose the music they liked.
The team, from Brunel University London and Queen Mary University London, looked at data from 7 000 patients in 73 trials. One reason is that doctors may doubt whether music will have any effect, she said, adding, “We hope this study will now shift misperceptions and highlight the positive impact music can have”. Patients who were allowed to select their own music also felt slightly better than those who had no choice. “However, care needs to be taken that music does not interfere with the medical team’s communication”.
For the team that just published findings on the impact of music in a surgical setting, the next step is to test conduct tests in real life. The only exclusions were surgery on the central nervous system, head and neck (because of potential hearing impairment). However a “music pillow” where a patient could have an ear close to the music, with the other trained on the doctor, could be the solution.
The investigators found that listening to music before, during or after surgery significantly lowered patients’ anxiety and pain, decreased their need for pain medicines, and increased their satisfaction with their care.
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“However, it’s taken pulling together all the small studies…into one robust meta-analysis to really prove it works”, he said.
