Music helps calm perioperative jitters

Listening to music in perioperative settings is feasible and well accepted by patients undergoing a surgery, helping address anxiety and depression before and after the procedure, a study has found.

A total of 135 women undergoing elective gynecologic day surgery in an academic hospital in Singapore participated in the pilot trial. A music therapist developed music playlists installed on an electronic music player, and the participants selected their preferred music to listen to in the period prior to and after their surgery.

All participants listened to music during the preoperative period, while only 70 opted to listen to music in the postoperative period. The majority of them expressed satisfaction with the music listening programme in both periods (95.5 percent and 91.5 percent, respectively).

In the period prior to surgery, the most popular playlists were Disney songs (17.7 percent), classical music (11.6 percent), and the Piano Guys (a group of pianist playing everything from classical crossover, orchestral pop, and instrumental rock; 7.5 percent).

In the postoperative period, classical music (26.3 percent) was the most favoured playlist. This was followed by Disney songs (7.9 percent) and the Beatles (7.9 percent).

When anxiety and depression were measured using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale and the three-level version of the EuroQol five-dimensional questionnaire, music listening was associated with significantly reduced scores (p=0.008).

The present data suggest that music listening represents a safe, inexpensive, and effective intervention to alleviate the anxiety and depression symptoms surgery patients may have.