March 2015 - Surgical Serenity Solutions

Three Questions you’ll want to ask when considering Surgical Serenity Solutions? Some FAQs

The concept of using music for the patient during surgery is still a new concept for many people. But the research is coming in! Even when you are asleep from anesthesia, your body STILL responds to the slow, steady pulse of the right music! How do I know this? Because I am a clinical musicologist who has spent the past 25 years studying this phenomenon and helping surgery patients create their own playlists from their favorite music, and then creating the Surgical Serenity Solution for those that either don’t have time to choose their own preferred music or would rather get something that is ready to go and proven effective!! Here are some more of the questions I often get:

Q1. Why should I use music before, during and after surgery if I’ll be asleep anyway?

A1. When you listen to soothing, steady, instrumental music before surgery (or other anxiety-provoking medical procedure) research documents measurable decreases in anxiety medications; when music continues into surgery, there is not only less anesthesia, but stabilized blood pressure, body temp, heart rate and respiration rate. The body synchronizes with the slow, steady tempo of the music and has a lower report of pain perception. After surgery, into the recovery room, the patient awakens with less nausea and vomiting, better oriented to time and place, and requiring less pain medication! This is big!

Q2. How can talk to my doctor about wanting to use the Surgical Serenity Solution?

A2. If you go to www.SurgicalSerenitySolutions.com, you will see a link to the blog. Click on that and in the right-hand margin you will see a link to our complimentary report “How to Talk with your Doctor about using Music in Surgery.” The brief report includes research studies that have been done, documenting all the positive benefits to patient when the right kind of music is used during surgery.

Q3. Why can’t I just bring my own iPod with earbuds of headphones?

A3. You can probably do this, but then the surgical team has to try and avoid the cord that is hanging down to connect iPod with headphones or earbuds. Our pre-programmed headphones are totally cordless and do not transmit any signal that could interfere with other devices in OR. Also, our headphones will be brand-new for you and completely sanitized and disinfected. And while your music may be favorite music and enjoyable, our proprietary classical blend has been specifically chosen to entrain or synchronize with your heart-rate and breathing.

At the request of many potential surgery patients, I will be publishing more of these Q and As so let me know what YOUR questions are!

Benefits of Music with Surgery: Revisited

As our Surgical Serenity Solution isn’t exactly well-known, I spend a lot of time explaining to people of all kinds, what the benefits of music before, during, and after surgery can be! Luckily, you can also search within this blog as well as my Healing Music Enterprises Blog, and my Brain and Music blog, for lots of other posts I’ve written through the years about the use of music during surgery.

Most of my readers know intuitively that music has great power to calm, soothe, comfort and heal. Having surgery is an extremely stressful event and very few people go into it except by medical necessity. Fear and anxiety are sky-high, and for many, many reasons. First of all, patients are afraid because of whatever is causing them to need surgery: cancer, joint replacement, heart valves or by-passes, need for a C-section, and on and on. Then there is the very real fear of anesthesia and what could happen if they have a bad reaction to it. This is especially true if they have not had general anesthesia previously.

When our scientifically-chosen music is administered to the patient through pre-programmed cordless headphones, research shows a significantly decreased amount of anesthesia and pain medication is needed, during and after the procedure! As a result, the patient recovers faster and has fewer post-op side-effects such as nausea, vomiting and dizziness.

Of course depending on what the surgery or procedure is, the patient will not be dancing out of the recovery room or hospital, but if we can decrease not only the side-effects experienced, but also the length of hospital stay, then using carefully chosen music, through cordless headphones, is definitely the way to go!!