New York: Playing music during biopsy for breast cancer diagnosis and treatment helps patients to reduce pre-operative anxiety, a research has found.
The study published in the journal AORN provided insights into the impact of implementing a music therapy programme for surgical patients.
The paper is based on the effect of live and recorded music on the anxiety of 207 women undergoing a biopsy for breast cancer diagnosis and treatment and randomised patients into a control group (no music), a live music group, or a recorded music group.
The researchers presented patients in the experimental groups with a live song performed by a music therapist at bedside or a recorded song played on an iPod through earphones.
Participants in both live and recorded-music groups experienced a significant reduction in pre-operative anxiety of 42.5 per cent and 41.2 per cent, respectively, when compared to the control group.
“During our two-year trial, we gained information on potential benefits, challenges and methods of facilitating a surgical music therapy program,” said Jaclyn Bradley Palmer, Music Therapist at the University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center, US.
The researcher said that a music therapist may be highly beneficial in the surgical setting, and music therapy may be a means of enhancing the quality of patient care in collaboration with perioperative nurses.
“As an interdisciplinary surgical staff member, the music therapist may help nurses achieve patient-related goals of anxiety reduction, pain management, effective education and satisfaction. And by having professional music therapists facilitate surgical music therapy programs, nursing workloads also may be reduced,” Palmer added.
IANS