Exceprted from "Music Quiets Pain After Surgery"
by Taunya English, Science Writer
Health Behavior News Service and
Music During Surgery Reduces Sedation Needs
By LiveScience Staff Pain relief and music Medication is the best, first choice to treat pain following surgery, but music may be a good complement to pain-relief drugs, according to a new review of clinical studies.
Patients who listened to music after surgery reported less pain than other patients who were not exposed to music, the review found. Music also reduced the patients' need for morphine-like drugs.
Lowering a patient's need for narcotics following a surgical procedure cuts the risk for drug complications like nausea and vomiting. But the review suggests that music's pain-relieving benefits are too small to result in fewer drug-related side effects, said lead reviewer M. Soledad Cepeda, M.D. But even if music provides minimal pain relief, it may be worth trying, because it is non-invasive and inexpensive, said Cepeda, a professor at Javeriana University School of Medicine in Bogota, Colombia, and a faculty member of the anesthesia department at Tufts-New England Medical Center.
The review appears in the current issue of The Cochrane Library, a publication of The Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates research in all aspects of health care. Systematic reviews draw evidence-based conclusions about medical practice after considering both the content and quality of existing trials on a topic.
"Before we didn't know if music worked," Cepeda said. "Now we know at least for acute postoperative pain that music decreases analgesic requirements and decreases pain intensity." Music is another tool pain specialists can add to their kit of pain-relieving resources, she said.
The Cochrane review analyzed a total of 51 trials testing music's effect on pain, but other study results were not consistent enough to conclude whether music relieves other kinds pain associated with cancer, childbirth and labor or discomfort during diagnostic procedures.
In addition to pain relief after surgery, music is used in the OR itself both by doctors (it helps concentration and focus) and is available for the surgical patient as well. How does the patient hear the music if s/he is asleep? The patient is hearing the music through lightweight headphones, designed specifically for the OR, which put the music directly into the brain, through the 8th cranial nerve.
A new study by the Yale School of Medicine confirms previous work showing that surgery patients listening to music require much less sedation.
Previous studies left open the question of whether it was music that did the trick, or just the act of blocking out the sound of dropped surgical instruments and other operating room noise.
In the new study, researchers tested 90 surgery patients at two facilities. Some wore headphones and listened to the music of their choice. Others heard white noise, that hiss and hum common to office buildings that's designed to drown out harsh noises. Others had no headphones.
Blocking sounds with white noise did not decrease sedative requirements, the study found, music did.
"Doctors and patients should both note that music can be used to supplement sedation in the operating room," said study team member Zeev Kain, a Yale professor in the Department of Anesthesiology.
The results are detailed in the May issue of the journal Anesthesia & Analgesia.
Music is turning out to be quite an elixir.
A 1999 study found that music after abdominal surgery can reduce patients' post-operative pain. Other studies have shown that music before and during surgery reduces blood pressure and nervousness.
Surgeons also perform better while listening to music, studies have shown, and many operating rooms are equipped with sound systems and music playlists handpicked by the doctors.
|
