Listening to music may accelerate postsurgical recovery, according to recent findings presented by Raees et al at the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Clinical Congress 2024.
Background
“When patients wake up after surgery, sometimes they feel really scared and don’t know where they are,” explained senior study author Eldo Frezza, MD, MBA, FACS, Professor of Surgery at the California Northstate University College of Medicine. “Music can help ease the transition from the waking up stage to a return to normalcy and may help reduce stress around that transition,” he added.
Unlike more active therapies such as meditation or Pilates—which require considerable concentration or movement—listening to music is a more passive experience and can be incorporated by patients without much cost or effort almost immediately after surgery.
Study Methods and Results
The investigators identified existing studies focused on the role of music in helping patients recover from surgery. They narrowed their search from 3,736 to 35 studies, all of which included data on patient outcomes such as pain and anxiety as well as measures of heart rate and opioid use.
They discovered that the act of listening to music after surgery—whether through headphones or a speaker—had notable effects on patients during their recovery period. For instance, the patients who listened to music had a statistically significant reduction in pain the day after surgery. Pain was calculated using two validated measures that asked patients to self-report their pain levels: the Numeric Rating Scale, showing about a 19% reduction in pain, and the Visual Analog Scale, demonstrating about a 7% reduction in pain.
Across all of the studies, self-reported anxiety levels were lower by about 3% (2.5 points), as assessed by the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory—a survey evaluating anxiety levels on a scale of 80. Further, the patients who listened to music used less than 50% of the amount of morphine compared with those who did not listen to music on the first day after surgery (an average of 0.758 mg vs 1.654 mg, respectively).
The investigators also revealed that the patients who listened to music experienced a reduced heart rate of approximately 4.5 fewer beats per minute compared with those who did not listen to music. They noted this finding was significant because maintaining a healthy range for a patient’s heart rate can help improve recovery by allowing effective circulation of oxygen and nutrients throughout the body, especially to areas that underwent operation. Tachycardia can lead to abnormal heart rhythms such as atrial fibrillation, which can be life-threatening.
Conclusions
“Although we can’t specifically say they’re in less pain, the studies revealed that patients perceive they are in less pain, and we think that is just as important,” highlighted lead study author Shehzaib Raees, BA, a third-year medical student at the California Northstate University College of Medicine. “When listening to music, [they] can disassociate and relax. In that way, there’s not much [they] have to do or focus on, and [they] can calm [themselves] down,” indicated Mr. Raees.
The investigators suggested that the reduction in cortisol levels observed when listening to music could play a role in speeding up patients’ recovery from surgery. Some variables such as how long the patients listened to music could not be controlled for in the analysis. Future studies will explore a pilot program to evaluate the use of music in the surgical setting as well as in the intensive care unit.
“We’re not trying to say that one type of music is better than another,” detailed Dr. Frezza. “We think music can help [patients] in different ways after surgery because music can be comforting and make [them] feel like [they’re] in a familiar place,” he concluded.
Disclosure: For full disclosures of the study authors, visit abstractsonline.com.
