It can contribute in reducing pain and anxiety and can boost recovery after the surgical treatment, a new study suggests. Music was useful when anesthesia has been used and patients were not in their consciousness.
Advertisement
The scientists also noted that listening to music can also help for patient’s quick recovery after the surgery.
The researchers note that music is a simple and cheap intervention that can help improve the outcome of surgeries.
If patients got to pick their own playlist, pain and the need for pain medication was only reduced more than when there was no music choice. Yet, the recent study is the first to prove that music has healing effects even in the case of those undergoing surgery. Other variables that they tried to compare to the effectiveness of “soothing” music were headphones with no music, routine care, undisturbed bed rest, and white noise.
These results rang true regardless of whether patients were played music before, after or during surgery, though the effects were strongest among those who listened to music prior to surgery.
Lead researcher Dr Catherine Meads, of Brunel University, said doubt about its benefit had meant many surgeons did not play music.
Anxious surgical patients may no longer have to pop so many pills to quell their fears-and their pain-stemming from medical operations.
“We believe that sufficient research has been done to show that music should be available to all patients undergoing operative procedures”, the four-member team said in a research paper that will be published on Thursday in the medical journal The Lancet.
Study co-author Dr Martin Hirsch of Queen Mary University of London, England concluded that since the days of Florence Nightingale people knew that listening to music could have a positive influence on patients.
The researchers were surprised to discover that music had a beneficial effect even when the patient was under anaesthetic.
The study followed several surgical teams on camera during their surgeries. In a 2010 study led by Boston University Nicholas Simmons-Stern, results showed that Alzheimer’s patients better recalled song lyrics when they were sung rather than spoken.
Advertisement
She hopes in future taking music into hospital will be as commonplace for patients as packing up toiletries and pyjamas. “If music can become distracting even during one operation, it is one too many and awareness has to be raised among clinical managers, but also the general public who are cared for under these circumstances”, warned Sharon-Marie Weldon from Imperial College London.
