August 2026 - Surgical Serenity Solutions

Music is as powerful as benzodiazepines

Having surgery is a frightening and stressful situation. Even before that, NEEDING surgery is a frightening and stressful situation.

Oftentimes people go to a doctor appointment thinking that they have just a few aches and pains, but nothing serious. After testing and examination, the doctor informs them that they will need surgery to correct a condition that will get worse or perhaps to replace a joint that will continue to deteriorate.

Sometimes, a routine medical test, like a colonoscopy or endoscopy can cause tremendous anxiety and stress. In these situations, doctors often prescribe benzodiazepines such as Valium, Xanax of Ativan. These modern drugs work very effectively, but like everything, there’s also a downside.

Benzodiazepines are intended for short-term use, but they work so effectively in terms of reducing anxiety and stress, that sometimes people want to keep taking them for much longer than intended. With severe overuse, or in combination with other drugs, like opioids, damage to the brain, liver, and other organs, can occur.

Now, a new meta-analysis published on the National Institutes of Health website documents that the right therapeutic music can be as powerful as benzodiazepines! This is great news.

A significant percentage of patients had their perioperative anxiety level reduced (as measured by the Visual Analog Scale for Anxiety) with an effectiveness similar to benzodiazepines.

Surgical Serenity Solutions provides an easy solution for music medicine in the perioperative period

Surgical Serenity Solutions has been providing preloaded headphones and MP3 players for hospitals and surgery centers since 2009. Our therapeutic playlists have been curated and sequenced by a clinical musicologist and in 2018 we introduced our mobile app on both the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.

Both hospitals and individual patients can purchase the preloaded headphones or the App to take into their procedures.

And now, dentists, opthalmologists, psychiatrists and all kinds of other specialists are using our devices in their clinics and recommending the app to the patients to listen to at home, before and after their procedures.

Are YOU ready to step into the future with Surgical Serenity Solutions?

Our Hospital Starter Kit is a popular tool for hospitals and Ambulatory Surgery Centers to start their own Music with Surgery programs and give your patients the powerful gift of therapeutic music for their procedures.

Either the preloaded headphones or the preloaded MP3 players will be a huge asset for the patient filled with anxiety and perhaps, previous negative experience with anesthesia.

In addition, your patient satisfaction score will soar and your marketing department will have access to all of our articles, research and blog post for their daily blasts! Definitely a win-win.

Let me know if you have any questions or how we can help you get started!

Read the full article here.

Our veterans deserve music that can help them heal, physically and emotionally

Our veterans deserve therapeutic music to heal

Our veterans deserve music that can help them heal, physically and emotionally. Since Surgical Serenity Solutions began providing pre-loaded headphones for surgical patients in 2009, the VA hospitals have been our #1 customer. Music therapy has always been important at VA hospitals and that is actually where the modern day music therapy profession first took root, right after WWII when soldiers cam back with serious injuries and mental health issues that left them depressed and with PTSD (although that term was not yet used right after WWII.)

How our relationship began

Our first interaction with VA hospitals came in 2013 when the Robley Rex VA hospital in Louisville, Kentucky suggested doing a research study under the guidance of Dr. Earl Gaar, Chief of Surgery there. Dr Gaar is also a gifted trumpet player and was well aware of the power of music with all populations inside the VA hospital and clinics there. But surgery was an area that had never been considered for their music therapy services because outsiders cannot be in a surgery procedure. Only the patient, surgeon, anesthesiologist and various nurses can be in the operating rooms.

In addition, when he read my writings about music medicine in surgery, he realized that ambient music is really not heard by the patient, but music that comes through headphones directly through the eighth cranial nerve is perceived. And the patient’s body (heart-rate and breathing} are able to entrain or synchronize, to the slow, steady pulse of the music. The music that the surgeon chooses is not heard by the patient and that’s a good thing because the OR staff typically chooses something upbeat in tempo and mood, and that is really not best for the patient.

The study was conducted during 2014-2015 and was looking at whether or not patients receiving our Surgical Serenity music through preloaded headphones perceived less pain during and after their procedure. As we expected, the patients listening to our therapeutic classical playlist, experienced significantly less pain.

Read the study here.

Since this study was published in 2015, many other VA hospitals from around the country have purchased and utilized our preloaded headphones for surgery as well as pain management, behavioral health, and even OB/GYN. Other VA hospitals have now also purchased our preloaded MP3 players which are very cost-effective when bought in quantity.

But we’ve really just scratched the surface. In 2023 we added the pre-loaded MP3 players to our list of products. The MP3 players are a way to maximize the hospitals with a smaller budget by offering 4-5 players for the price of one pre-loaded headphones. The only difference is that the headphones are cordless and the MP3 players have cords.

Why VA Hospitals are so important right now

As of 2026, our country is at war. The war was totally unexpected and is now dragging on much longer than expercted. Wounded veterans are already being admitted to our already busy hospitals. While the numbers of veterans increase, the number of employees is decreasing. Not only are there not enough surgeons and anesthesiologists being employed, there are not nearly enough music therapists on staff. Music therapists are trained to do group therapy as well is individual music therapy. But rarely do veterans get an individual music therapy session.

You can help our Vets with therapeutic music

If you are a medical professional or hospital administrator, you can provide comfort and healing with these powerful yet cost-effective players and playlists. Many VA hospitals are already using them with great results.

For more information go to our Home page and look under the “For Medical Facilities” heading.

If you have questions, contact us here