Music with Surgery: Case History #6, 63 year-old woman with a lumpectomy

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

Patient was a 63-year old woman who had just discovered that she had a lump in her breast.  Patient had already met with her surgeon and had decided to have a lumpectomy rather than a mastectomy because they had caught it early and were fairly confident that it was still contained to the one spot in her breast.

As a result of talking to her friends and family, patient decided that she would like to try using music with her procedure in order to lessen the side-effects of anesthesia by decreasing the amount of anesthesia she would need.  She was excited to hear that by augmenting the effects of anesthesia with music, she would require less anesthesia.  Listen as this patient explains what the experience was like for her:

If you have been told that you need a lumpectomy or a mastectomy, please consider using the Surgical Serenity Headphones. For more information, see www.surgicalheadphones.com.

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

Preparing for your surgery: 3 Easy Ideas

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

 If you’ve just found you need surgery, or if you’ve decided to have an elective procedure, you still have fears and anxiety.  Everyone does if they’re honest with themselves:

  • What if something goes wrong?
  • What if I wake up in the middle of the procedure?
  • What if I don’t wake up at all?!

In the vast majority of surgeries, nothing goes wrong.  Surgery happens all over the world, every day.  But when things go wrong, whether it’s leaving the sponge inside the patient’s body, taking off the wrong leg, or breast, or hand, it’s extremely traumatic.

I was always taught that knowledge is power, so if you’re planning to have surgery, you need to get information and do everything you reasonably can to assure a successful procedure.   One of the easiest things you can do is to listen to music before, during and after your surgery or other medical procedure.

  1. If you have enough time and know-how, you can begin choosing some of your favorite relaxing, comforting music to listen to, initially for an hour each day before the surgery, while lying down so that you can practice relaxing when you hear that self-chosen music.
  2. You can talk to your surgeon in advance of the surgery and download your chosen music to your iPod or other MP3 player.  If s/he approves the plan, you can take it to the hospital the day of the surgery and begin listening as soon as you get there, and continue all the way through recovery.  There is ample research documenting the benefits of this, including reduced anxiety meds, anesthesia, and pain medication afterwards.
  3. If you don’t have time, know-how, or willingness to do these things, you can buy pre-programmed headphones that already have the slow, steady, soothing music that researchers believe will keep your heart-beat and respiration steady and decrease the amount of anesthesia and pain medication you will need.

If I can help you in any way, feel free to contact me via a comment on this blog.  Best wishes for a successful procedure!

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

Surgery Headphones continue to help people get through surgery with fewer problems

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

  When the surgery headphones were conceived in 2005, there had already been 15 years of preparation.  Starting in 1990. we were beginning to be aware at the University of Louisville School of Medicine, that music before and after surgery were powerful ways of decreasing anxiety and pain, as well as stabilizing blood pressure, body temp and mood.  We weren’t positive about how much effect it might have during surgery, but we suspected that it could reduce the amount of anesthesia even though the patient’s sense of hearing is not functioning.  How does that work?  Through the process of “entrainment” which means that the pulse of the music is transmitted by vibration through the headphones directly to the brain and body.  Because of this phenomenon of “rhythmic entrainment” the heartrate and breathing synchronize with the pulse of the music and this keeps the body relaed through the surgery.

Of course, the less medication the patient has, the faster they recover, get back to work and the fewer complications arise. We can mail the headphones anywhere in the world and we can program the type of music you request for a slight additional fee.  The music we have selected now is classical piano music that has the slow, steady pulse that is best for surgery.  Don’t have surgery without them!!

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

Going Under the Knife: are you afraid of anesthesia?

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

CystoscopySSSPeople tell me on a regular basis that they have a tremendous fear of going under anesthesia, especially general anesthesia.  Today, general anesthesia is a very safe process, if you have no complications, are in generally good health, and have no history of problems with anesthesia.

There are many exceptions to the above-mentioned situations though.  What if you have cancer and have been taking chemotherapy and have a suppressed immune system?  What if you are elderly and frail with a heart condition or other pre-existing conditions?  What if you have lots of allergies and a family history of problems with anesthesia.  Of course, there is not an easy answer here.  Each case must be judged on its own merits and you must talk very carefully with your doctors and your family.  However, in some cases, you just need to have surgery and you really need to have general anesthesia.

In this case I would strongly recommend that you consider using music before, during and after the procedure.  Music is a very well-documented and effective adjunct to anesthesia.  Slow, steady, soothing music entrains or synchronizes with your heartbeat and breathing to keep you calm and relaxed before they take you back, during the surgery, and throughout your time in the recovery room.

In addition, many surgeons today play their own favorite music in the OR and often it is upbeat, fast and even syncopated music.  This is thought not to affect the patient, and yet patients come to me after their surgery and tell me they heard conversations and loud music that they did not like!  For this reason, I recommend that the patient listen to their own favorite music through lightweight, cordless headphones that have the most appropriate music already programmed onto them.

If you have the time and know far enough in advance, you can create your own playlist and bring your own iPod or other MP3 player in.  OR, you can get some from www.surgicalheadphones.com.  They are being used around the world already and research studies are in progress to prove their effectiveness in reducing the amounts of medication you will need.  Best wishes as you go through this process and let me know how it goes!

Listening to soothing music before, during and after surgery can reduce the amount of anesthesia and pain medication you require

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

Want Music with Your Surgery?: the Time is NOW!

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

There has never been a better time to utilize the power of music with your surgery.  For several decades now, surgeons have been playing their favorite music in the O.R. but it was assumed that if the patient was under general anesthesia, that they did not need their own music, nor were they affected by the surgeon’s music.  Current research and awarenesses are rapidly changing that!

It turns out that not only IS the patient affected negatively if the surgeon choses raucous or too lively music (and yes, that does happen!)  A surgical nurse locally told me that one surgeon regularly plays “Queen’s” song “Another One Bites the Dust” when he operates!  I was appalled!  On the other hand, surgeons and anesthesiologists are becoming aware that even when the patient is totally unconscious from the anesthesia and unable to “hear” technically, the slow, steady, pulsing of certain classical music can entrain or synchronize the person’s heartrate and breathing so that they stay more relaxed on the operating table with less anesthesia.  Because they require less anesthesia to stay asleep, they awaken sooner and with less nausea, dizziness, “brain fog” and recover faster!

When the patient recovers faster, they are discharged from the hospital sooner, with fewer side effects, they get back to work and back to the lives sooner and the hospital can process more patients in one 24 hour period.  So what’s the downside?  We haven’t found anything yet.

Yes, you can create your own playlist of your favorite slow, steady music and download it to your own iPod to take into surgery….or you can get these really amazing lightweight, cordless headphones that have a built-in MP3 player, already loaded with “Surgical Serenity” music!  Your choice!  Click on the picture of the headphones or go to www.SurgicalHeadphones.com to learn more.  You can also contact me at DrAlice@surgicalheadphones.com.  Best wishes on your surgery.

 

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

Classical music ‘improves surgery’

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

Patients who played classical music ---and FrankSinatra---during minor surgery were more relaxed.Classical music could become a routine part of surgery, after a study found it   helped to relax patients under local anaesthetic.

Surgeons believe playing a little knife music might benefit patients so much   that they recover sooner from their operations.

Mozart was not actually one of the composers that those in the study got to   hear. However, they were offered equally soothing pieces by Beethoven,   Vivaldi and Bach.

Frank Sinatra was also on hand for those who preferred some easy listening   during the operations, which included washing out major wounds.

Hazim Sadideen, the plastic surgeon who led the project at the John Radcliffe  Hospital in Oxford, said: “Undergoing surgery can be a stressful   experience for patients and finding ways of making them more comfortable   should be our goal as clinicians.

“There are also good medical reasons – calmer patients may cope better   with pain and recover quicker.

“This small scale work is the first time an attempt has been made to   measure the impact music has in this specific group of patients and hints at the need for bigger multi-centre research to establish whether this should become part of standard practice.”

In the study, published in the journal Annals of the Royal College of  Surgeons, 96 patients undergoing minor surgery were randomly assigned   either music or silence. All were awake during their procedures, which   included routine removal of skin lesions and cleansing of upper limb wounds after accidents.

The half played music reported lower anxiety levels and lower breathing rates than the others.

The medics did not evaluate whether Beethoven was better for patients than Bach.

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

Music Eases the Stress of Surgery—it’s a no-brainer!

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

 For as long as humans have pounded drums and plucked strings, listening to music has affected people’s sense of well-being, lifting their spirits and — as new research shows — calming their nerves. Literally. According to a study at Cleveland Clinic, music can slow the neuronal firings deep within the brain during surgery designed to treat Parkinson’s patients.

The seeds of this study were planted about two years ago, when a patient named Damir Janigro was being prepped for spinal surgery. Janigro, who is also a neuroscientist at the clinic, lay captive to the nerve-racking din of the operating room and in his frazzled state thought about how dentists often give their patients earphones to help ease anxiety. (See the top 10 medical breakthroughs of 2008.)

If people getting root canals merited a musical intervention, he thought, why not people undergoing brain surgery? Patients with conditions such as epilepsy, brain tumors, severe depression, and obsessive-compulsive and motor disorders like Parkinson’s have to be awake for surgical procedures that often take several hours. Janigro and his team decided to use that wakeful period to determine whether music made the subjects’ experience in the operating room less stressful.

He will present his findings on Oct. 30 as part of a symposium in New York City on music and the brain. The son of a world-renowned cellist, Janigro specializes in studying epilepsy and is associated with Cleveland Clinic’s Arts and Medicine Institute, which is working to advance our understanding of how music can do such things as help decrease pain and blood pressure and improve movement in Parkinson’s patients.

The medical community has long been interested in how the brain is affected by music. Historically, however, most research was linked to the cortex, the brain’s outer layer, which is associated with functions like memory, consciousness and abstract thought.

In those studies, neurosurgical patients, wide awake with their cortex exposed, listened to certain sounds and music. While their neural activity was being recorded, they told researchers how those selections made them feel.

Janigro wanted to perform similar studies on motor centers deep within the brain. Because music is often associated with movement — like tapping one’s feet — he theorized that music could be used to modify the activity of thalamic and subthalamic neurons, which are located in the same area where a neuronal pacemaker is implanted during deep-brain stimulation.

In Janigro’s study, more than a dozen neurosurgical patients, predominantly with Parkinson’s, listened to three musical selections — rhythmic music with no discernible melody (by Gyorgi Ligeti, of Stanley Kubrick–movie fame), melodic music with undefined rhythm (by Aaron Jay Kernis, a Pulitzer Prize winner) and something in between (Ludwig van Beethoven). In the later stages of the research, to prevent familiarity from swaying the subjects’ responses, music was specifically composed for the study by students from the Cleveland Institute of Music.

In the end, patients almost unanimously said the purely melodic offerings were the most soothing. But the recordings of their brain activity were eye-opening. (Read “The Year in Medicine 2008: From A to Z.”)

Listening to melodic music decreased the activity of individual neurons in the deep brain, says Janigro, adding that the physical responses to the calming music ranged from patients’ closing their eyes to falling asleep. Some patients even settled into a nice round of snoring. And when lead neurosurgeon Ali Rezai needed patients to perform an action, such as lifting a limb, during the procedures, he simply removed their earphones and relayed instructions. Once the music resumed, patients returned to their snoozing.

These are very desirable results, says Janigro. With the right music, he says, patients can be more relaxed in the operating room. And that relaxation may mean not only that procedures involve less medication — to control blood pressure, which increases with stress — but perhaps that patients have quicker recovery times and shorter hospital stays.

Janigro anticipates that following institutional approval, music will be used during certain neurosurgical procedures at the clinic as early as 2010. He hopes other hospitals will soon follow Cleveland’s lead. “This type of surgery can be a traumatizing experience, and using music can decrease anxiety,” he notes.

And you can’t beat the cost.

With health-care expenditures through the roof, this patient benefit is practically free, says Janigro, who used his own iPod and that of a colleague’s to pump in the music for the study. “The clinic doesn’t have a budget for iPods yet, but soon I think we will. It’s a no-brainer,” he says. “There’s nothing more calming than sleep.”

from “Time” Magazine, 10/23/2009

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

Which hospitals in the U.S. are using the Surgical Serenity Headphones?

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

 This is a question that I get more and more these days.  As people around the country and around the world, find out about our ready-to-go, pre-programmed surgical headphones, they want to know that the research is there and that nationally-known, reputable hospitals are already using them.

 

Well, good news!  They are already being used at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and the Cleveland Clinic in both Ohio and Florida.  Individuals have purchased them and used them here in Louisville, KY at Baptist Hospital East, Jewish Hospital and Norton Hospital downtown as well as Norton Suburban Hospital.  They’ve been used at hospitals in New York City, Greenville, S.C., Spartanburg, S.C., Birmingham, AL, Houston, TX, San Francisco, CA and in Canada, Hawaii and London.

Several patients were afraid that they would not be able to wear them into surgery, but only two people nationwide were told that they could not take them into surgery.  These patients both concluded simply that it had not been done before and that the surgeon or anesthesiologist did not want to try it.  No medical or safety precaution could be cited.

To date, all patients who actually used the music before, during, and after their surgery have reported that they will never have surgery again without using their headphones and music.  Patients have said that they drift off to sleep feeling as though they’re at the beach, listening to favorite music through headphones and totally forget that they’re in a hospital about to have surgery.  Needless to say, when patients are not tensed up and rigid with fear and anticipation, the procedure goes better:  less anxiety meds, less anesthesia, less pain medicaltion = faster and safer procedure and recovery!  Who could argue with that?

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

Fear of Anesthesia: How Can the Right Music Help?

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail
Waiting for a Ceasarean-section childbirth

  As a therapist and a clinical musicologist, I talk to people nearly every day that have just been told that they need to have surgery and are almost more fearful of the anesthesia than they are of having surgery!  Why?  Because general anesthesia is very powerful medication and occasionally people do not survive the anesthesia.  The vast majority of people do fine, but if the patient is elderly or in a fragile health state already, it is a delicate balance.

How can music help?  Music therapy and Operating Room nursing journals have shown repeatedly shown that listening to your favorite calming, comforting, soothing music can make a very positive difference in your overall surgical experience.  There are also dozens, if not hundreds, of clinical studies showing that music in the recovery area can help the patient stay calm and comfortable as they regain consciousness and begin to feel the pain of the surgery.
Now, studies are being conducted to confirm that music DURING surgery can also make a positive difference and possibly decrease the amount of anesthesia needed to achieve the same degree of sedation, but without as much risk.  This is achieved by tapping into the power of rhythmic entrainment, by which the slow, steady tempo of the music brings the heartrate and the breathing into synchronization with the music and thereby keeps the body relaxed.
To learn more about the incredible power and benefits of music during anesthesia and surgery, please check out:  www.SurgicalHeadphones.com.
FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

Propofol and Music during surgery

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

The trial of Conrad Murray is over and he was found guilty.  Things have to get pretty bad for someone to need propofol to sleep every night!  But Dr. Murray was willing to do this for Michael for enough money!

  It seems that Propofol has been used in surgery for about 35 years now and has been used safely.  Of course, Propofol (diprivan) was never intended to put people to sleep; people who suffer from insomnia and are at home.  Propofol is en extremely effect agent for inducing anesthesia and temporary amnesia.  Because of its milky appearance and its usefulness in the operating room, it is sometimes called “Milk of Amnesia.”  Tragically, Dr. Murray was accused of involuntary manslaughter because he illegally gave Michael Jackson Propofol in his home, because Jackson had severe insomnia.  Apparently, Murray had been doing this for sometime but did not know enough about the whole process to prevent this from happening.

Can music through headphones be used to affect the amount of Propofol required by the patient?  Take a look at this  study, done back on 2005, which I now present to you:

Anaesthesia. 2005 Oct;60(10):990-4.

Effects of music on target-controlled infusion of propofol requirements during combined spinal-epidural anaesthesia.

Source

Department of Anaesthesiology, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China. zlxu@mails.tjmu.edu.cn

Abstract

The sedative effects of music were evaluated using the bispectral index (BIS) during target-controlled infusion (TCI) propofol. A total of 110 women undergoing hysterectomy were randomly allocated to receive either music or no music. Propofol was administered using target-controlled infusion and the concentration adjusted gradually to achieve an observer’s assessment of alertness/sedation (OAA/S) score of 3 intra-operatively. The haemodynamic and bispectral index values during the sedation phase were recorded. Interleukin-6 was evaluated before, immediately after and 1 h following intervention. The music group had a significant reduction in mean (SD) induction time of sedation: 12 (12) min vs. 18 (12) min, p < 0.01; propofol target concentration: 1.6 (0.3) microg.ml(-1) vs. 2.4 (0.4) microg.ml(-1), p < 0.0001; intra-operative amount of propofol: 171 (98) mg vs. 251 (92) mg, p < 0.0001; and significantly higher levels of satisfaction with their peri-operative care: 9.6 (0.6) compared to the control group: 8.1 (1.0), p < 0.0001. No other differences were found. The results show the influence of music on the induction time of sedation, concentration and level of propofol during surgery, and suggest sedative benefits of music.

 

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail
Go to Top