Do YOU have a fear of Anesthesia or Surgery?

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Do YOU have a fear of anesthesia or surgery?  So many people have an intense fear of anesthesia and surgery that they postpone needed surgery, that could greatly improve their quality of life, because they are afraid that they will be in a worse condition, or not wake up at all!  Why do people experience fear this intense?  There can be lots of reasons, as I’ll explain in  this post…

Perhaps you come from a family of people who do not like going to the doctor because “the doctor always finds something wrong.”  Perhaps you know someone who has had a bad experience with surgery or anesthesia.  Perhaps YOU have had a bad experience with surgery or anesthesia.

The fact is, mistakes do happen, but in today’s medical world, surgery and anesthesia have never been more safe.  Fear and anxiety are rampant!   Everyone who is about to have surgery, has an extensive history taken by the doctors and nurses, about how you and other family members have responded to anesthesia in the past.  Thanks to the internet, there is LOTS of excellent, reputable information on the internet.

Still, fear and anxiety are not always rational.  If you have had an unexpected reaction in the past, or a close friend or family member has, you are probably going to be really scared and concerned.  I don’t want to diminish that or say that it’s silly or unwarranted.

Research has shown that when slow, steady, soothing music is played for a patient that has a racing pulse and rapid, shallow breathing, the music can actually slow the patient’s heart and breathing down, and keep them steady!  When this happens, the “relaxation response” kicks in. This is called “rhythmic entrainment.”  The more relaxed your body and muscles are, the easier it is for the doctors and nurses to do what they need to do to help you.

If your muscles are tense and stiff, it’s going to take more medication to relax you, and more medication to wake up from and recover from.  Yes, you also have to recover from the medication!!

So how does music help?

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New Hospital Program planned for Surgical Headphones

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For the past 5 years we have been marketing our surgical  headphones primarily to individuals who are preparing for surgery.  After selling hundreds of these clinically and scientifically proven headphones with our proprietary music on them, we have decided to also have a different headphone that we will market to hospitals.  The new headphones is intended to be given or issued to each surgical patient for them to keep and take home to continue using in their recovery.

We have put thousands of hours into this process and are excited to reveal that we are getting really close to having this new surgical headphone ready to provide to hospitals!  With concerns about infection-control at an all-time high, many hospitals don’t want to re-use anything that they can make disposable.  Although we wouldn’t call this new surgical headphone disposable, we do believe that the new price will allow hospitals to give all surgical patients their own surgical headphone and in addition, patients will have at least four different playlists to choose from.

When we went to the AORN conference in Denver in 2015, this nurse from Johns Hopkins hospital was extremely enthusiastic about our surgical headphones!

Of course we will keep selling our premium surgical headphone will 4 GB of memory and a battery life of 20-24 hours.  We anticipate that dentists will buy these because they can more safely re-use them, as well as cosmetic surgery practices where price restrictions are not so intense.  To order these, just go to www.SurgicalSerenitySolutions.com.  We look forward to providing our proven surgical headphones to all patients preparing for surgery!

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Have you seen the research? Check it out! Pre-surgical music results

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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.

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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Surgical Serenity Solutions: Ideal music delivery

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While reading through some new research this morning, on the benefits of music before, during and after surgery, I came across several patients who commented that although some “pretty music” was playing in the operating room during their procedure, they couldn’t hear it very well.  I wonder why?  Some of the things that could very well be going on in the OR would be:

  • Lots of beeping from lots of different medical device machines
  • Lots of conversation between surgeon, nurses, assistants
  • Sawing, hammering and drilling if it’s a joint replacement
  • The music chosen by the surgeon, which is probably loud and upbeat…not what you want if you’re the patient!

Sooooo, why did we decide to find some fabulous cordless headphones?  So many great reasons:

  • Programmable unit is totally self-contained
  • Our proprietary, scientifically tested, highly-praised music comes loaded on the headphones, but
  • You can add your own favorite music, if you wish!
  • There are no cords dangling around neck to tangle with other equipment
  • The headphones block the distracting conversations and unpleasant sound of surgery

If you’ve just found out that you need surgery, you’re probably scared and anxious.  If you’ve never had surgery, you don’t know what to expect.  If you have had surgery but had a bad experience, or a negative reaction to anesthesia, then you are even more fearful of going through this again.  Do yourself a favor!  Order the Surgical Serenity Solution now, download the free “How to Talk with Your Doctor about Using Music During Surgery,” and start getting proactive.  Thousands of people have had music during their surgical experience and those that used the headphones simply rave about how easy they were and how much they helped!

Please feel free to contact me with any questions!

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Benefits of Music with Surgery: Revisited

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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!!

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Will MY hospital have these Surgical Serenity headphones for me?

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prepare.surgeryIf you are going to one of the cutting edge hospitals in the U.S. (and we’re not allowed to name the hospitals who have them waiting for you at this point) you might very well find the headphones there.  Four of the largest hospital systems in the world either have the headphones or are seriously considering them for their patients.  All you need to do is ask your surgeon if the hospital where your procedure is being done, utilizes the Surgical Serenity Solutions.  He should know immediately whether they do or don’t.

One of the main reasons I had the idea to create pre-programmed, cordless headphones for the patient was for the patients convenience.  I know that when I had surgery 20 years ago, I did not have a lot of advance notice.  I was literally up all night the night before my back surgery, creating three cassette tapes for before, during and after my surgery.  Because I was a clinical musicologist even then, I knew the benefits of steady, soothing, instrumental music in the surgical process.  My surgeon was fascinated by all of this, and even though I used a Walkman, connected to headphones with a wire, the surgeon and anesthesiologist allow this in the OR.

In 2005, when the idea to create programmed, cordless headphones was born, one of my main reasons was so that patients who were likely already in pain and quite fearful of going under general anesthesia, could have easy access to music for their surgery that had been tested and approved by hundreds of people.  Now we have this!

The headphones are getting national attention now and I do believe that one day they will be standard equipment in all hospitals.  If your hospital does not have them waiting for you, please order yours now!!  You will be so glad that you did!

To order:  www.SurgicalHeadphones.com

 

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Fear of Surgery: is it holding you back?

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Let me start by saying:  fear of surgery is not unusual!  Nor is it wrong, or silly, or stupid.  Actually, I think that someone who had just been told they need surgery, would be foolish simply to accept that blindly.   I’ve had surgery numerous times, unfortunately, but obviously I survived!

No one wants their body to be cut on! Nobody in their right mind, but sometimes, the doctor needs to go in and repair something, remove something, or perhaps, just improve it.   In that case, you’re going to need to have surgery.

I’m a great believer in educating yourself and now that we have Google and Bing and other search engines, you can quickly get lots of quality information on most any subject imaginable.  Many people take the ostrich approach and bury their heads in the sand, thinking that if they can just ignore their physical problem it will go away…but it never does!

What if you could be reassured enough to go ahead and have your surgery done and put it behind you?  Many people neglect their surgery because they are truly afraid that they won’t wake up from anesthesia and will never see family and friends again.  Others fear the pain that will invariably result from cutting into the body.  But did you know, that when music is put into your brain, through headphones, anesthesia and pain medication can sometimes be cut in half!!  Yes, this is what research in the fields of music therapy, nursing, surgery and music medicine have shown.  Even if you don’t require 50% less anesthesia and pain medication, you will require less of each, and the less medication you require, the more like you will awaken from surgery and get back to your life.

If you’re interested in knowing more about this, go to Surgical Serenity Solutions and begin educating yourself about music with surgery!

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Reactions to anesthesia during surgery

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Yes, occasionally people do react adversely to anesthesia during a surgical or medical procedure.  If you’ve been healthy all of your life and never needed to take anesthesia or pain medication, how would you know?

I just heard a dear lady on TV say that she almost lost her husband to an anesthesia reaction, when the surgery was over and he was in the recovery area.  She was sitting beside him and just noticed that he was getting white as a sheet.  She called the doctors and his blood pressure was dropping rapidly.  If she had not observed this, he might have died.

How could music possibly make a difference?   I’ll tell you!  In the scientific research into how music affects the body, we learn about the process of entrainment.  Entrainment is a scientifically documented phenomenon wherein the  pulse of the music synchronizes the body rhythms, (heart rate and breathing) to the pulse of the music.  When the patient is hearing slow, steady soothing music before, during and after his procedure, there is a very good chance that his heart rate, breathing and blood pressure will stabilize and the patient will require less anesthesia and pain medication to stay comfortable.

Research in music therapy, nursing, anesthesiology and other fields is documenting this all over the world.  There are a few hospitals that actually have music therapists playing live music for the patient.  If this is not an option for you, please check out the pre-programmed, Surgical Serenity Headphones and Music.  They are already in use at Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic and VA hospitals.  Let me know if I can help you!

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My Journey Into Using Music During Surgery

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For years, even  decades, I heard about people who used music during their surgical procedures.  I was always fascinated, being a musician and music-lover, exactly how this worked.  No one would really give me a straight answer about this and so eventually, I decided it must be a rare and esoteric experience that once could only get in New York, L.A., or perhaps Paris.  Little did I know, for the longest time, that there really was no particular method for getting your surgeon to provide music during your surgery.  And because I had never had surgery (except some relatively minor dental surgery) I wasn’t too concerned about it.

All of that changed in late summer of 1975 when I found that I would be having a baby in April of 1976.  Although I was happy and excited about this news, my mind went immediately to labor and delivery and what the pain management options would be.  I had heard my mother’s not-so-pleasant experience in the hospitals of 1948 when I was born, and I surely did not want to repeat her experience.  She was given scopolamine for her labor which lasted something crazy like two days.  At the end, she was completely knocked out and didn’t even see me until I was several days old!

Even though I knew that they didn’t even use that drug anymore for labor and delivery, I also didn’t want anyone sticking a needle in my back and accidentally hitting a nerve that would send me through the roof.  I decided then and there that I would use natural childbirth, the Lamaze method, and supplement that with music.  In 1976 that was really not so easy to do.  First of all, there were no CD’s or iPods, but only records and record-players and the hospital was not going to let anyone drag in their record player from home!  There were cassette tapes by then, but the music I wanted I didn’t own and it wasn’t that easy to make your own at that point.

Jump to 1990:  I had just gotten my Ph.D. in musicology and landed at dream job at the University School of Medicine as Coordinator of Music and Medicine.   Again, I began hearing about the use of music during surgery an reading everything I could get my hands on!  By 1993, I was speaking quite a bit about the “Healing Power of Music” and beginning to emphasize the benefits of music during surgery using that tapes that I was helping people put together before their surgeries.

Jump to 2005:  By then, I had probably helped hundreds of people to create their own tapes and then CD’s for surgery.  Now I was beginning to think, why couldn’t someone create headphones for surgery that were already programmed with the ideal, calm, steady, soothing music, that research has documented that people need less anesthesia, pain medication, etc. and recover faster as a result of less medication, and get back to their lives, happier and healthier!

Today, in September of 2013, these headphones are selling all over the world.  We began by selling them to the patients exclusively, but now we are actively selling them to hospitals and they are beginning to purchase them by the hundreds.  If you are contemplating surgery or if you have surgery scheduled, you need to order them NOW.  We can overnight them to you anywhere in the continental US, but don’t delay!  Go to www.SurgicalHeadphones.com.  They can be used for general anesthesia procedures as well as labor and delivery, dental surgery, cosmetic procedures of any kind, and simply for calming down and relaxing.  Go to www.SurgicalHeadphones.com right now!  Thank you!

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Fear of Surgery and Anesthesia: Is it realistic?

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In the year 2013, hasn’t most of the danger of surgery and anesthesia been eradicated?  Well, I don’t want to discourage you from having needed surgery because the vast majority of procedures go as planned and improve the quality of life immeasurably for that patient.  But just how wrong can things go?

I don’t need to recount the horror stories of surgeries gone bad from all kinds of mistakes, but you’ve heard them.  I believe that things have improved over the last few years but occasionally we still hear of the wrong limb being operated on or even removed.  We still hear of sponges being sewn up in patients, all things that could be prevented.

What can’t be prevented is bad reactions to anesthesia or pain medication in people who have never had surgery or had medical treatment at all.  Here is when using music can be particularly helpful by supplementing the relaxation effect and decreasing the need for as much anesthesia or pain medication.  Why wouldn’t a person use music?  Well, there are a few that I can think of:

  • They don’t know about how powerful music can be in surgery
  • They don’t realize that they can buy pre-programmed headphones for surgery
  • And that’s about it!

If you have been told that you need any kind of surgery at all, including dental surgery, please plan to use music.  Either your own favorite music through an iPod, or the pre-programmed headphones will give you a more positive experience and outcome!  Feel better!

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