When I was designing the choosing the music that I felt would be most helpful pre-surgery, I had three primary goals:
- Calm the patient to reduce anxiety medication
- Provide calming music through comfortable, lightweight headphones to decrease external negative stimuli
- Calm the patient with soothing, steady music, so that when they get to surgery, they will need less anesthesia, having been significantly calmed through the music
Apparently, I am not the only one who has thought of that; there are quite a few studies out there on this exact thing and I would like to give you the citations for some of the best of them.
- Music Benefits on Postoperative Distress and Pain in Pediatric Day Care Surgery
- The Effect of Music on Pre-operative sedation and the Bi-Spectral Index (Anesthesia and Analgesia 2005 Jul; 101)
- Relaxing Music as Pre-medication before surgery (Acta Anaesthesiol Scand 2009 Jul:53)
All of these studies were looking at calming and relaxing the patient before surgery with music, and all achieved this goal! With increased emphasis on patient satisfaction and non-chemical interventions, the Surgical Serenity Solution is destined to be in hospitals around the world within the next decade!
Yes, there is lots of different pre-existing music that would fill the bill, and yes, you can create your own playlist and take it into surgery on an iPod. But why not let a clinical musicologist do it for you? I’ve spent nearly 50 years of my life studying all kinds of music and the effect it has on the human body. I’ve put it on lightweight cordless headphones for you and they’re ready to go! iPods are covered with germs, unless you buy yourself a brand-new one. Also the cord that connects it to ear-buds or corded headphones can get tangled with other OR equipment and block the airway if an emergency emergency airway needs to be created.
The proof is there! Get your headphones now!
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