Music and Anesthesia Archives - Surgical Serenity Solutions

Breakthrough Medical Treatment Using the Power of Therapeutic Music

Patient awakening from surgery using the surgical serenity headphones

People have known for millennia that music, sound, and vibration can have a soothing, calming effect. The first music created by humans was probably created to imitate the sounds of nature that we knew were soothing and calming: birdsongs, waves lapping the shore, wind through the trees, a babbling brook—all of these were thought to be calming and comforting.

Today, we are taking calming, therapeutic music into the surgical suite, to calm and soothe the jangled nerves of the patient about to have surgery. An innovative clinical musicologist has created and patented a process to provide this music, through cordless headphones, or MP3players to the patient throughout the perioperative period.

The Existing Medical Research

A clinical trial was conducted at the Veterans Hospital here in Louisville, Kentucky. Veterans undergoing major abdominal surgery wore our Surgical Serenity Solutions lightweight, pre-loaded, headphones before, during and after the surgery, and into recovery. The results were impressive.

The MOST exciting result was a statistically significant decrease in opioid consumption after the surgery was completed. This was important because the opioid epidemic has been raging now for decades it is exciting to know that listening to this therapeutic playlist through cordless headphones can make a significant difference.

The veterans really enjoyed the music too. Many of them initially asked for rock and roll or country music. The experimenter, Dr. Marina Varbanova, an anesthesiologist, explained that when a patient is having surgery it is best to use calming music that is purely instrumental and does not have a lot of associations. In a way, this is the opposite of music therapy where a one on one relationship is created and the music therapist tries to determine what kind of music the patients prefers and achieve positive therapeutic goals by playing the music that has positive associations for them.

Once the veterans understood the purpose of the music for surgery, they were fine with the classical playlist and several responded that they didn’t realize until then that they really do like classical music. This published study can be read at https://www.surgicalserenitysolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Our-SSS-study.pdf

Using the Therapeutic Playlists in places other than surgery

Insomnia and music Insomnia seems to be a serious problem for lots of people these days. Although we do have a specific “Lullaby Playlist,” since these 5 therapeutic playlists were created for the surgical patient who is being put to sleep, any of them have a very soothing and soporific effect.

Men and women have reported that they fell asleep quickly and stayed asleep for longer than usual when they used this music at home.

Now that we have each playlist available in a mobile app format, (www.surgicalserenitysolutions.com/calm) you can listen with your own earbuds or through a nearby bluetooth speaker, playing very softly.

In addition to actual surgical procedures and insomnia, there are in-hospital procedures such as colonoscopies, labor and delivery, and even blood draws. For the patient having these procedures, we offer the preloaded, cordless, fully self-contained headphones that the patient can use over and over, even at the dentist. To get those, go to www.surgicalserenitysolutions.com/headphones.

For the hospital staff, we now have our five therapeutic playlists available on small MP3 players that can be branded for the hospital and actually give to the patient after their surgery or procedure! When hospitals do this, the first order can come out of the marketing budget! To see or purchase, go to www.surgicalserenitysolutions.com/MP3players.

No matter whether you’re the patient, the surgeon, or the hospital, we can help! Music can make a tremendous difference in terms of reducing the amount of pain medication, anxiety medication, and recovery time. Research has documented this.

Apps: www.surgicalserenitysolutions.com/calm

Preloaded headphones: www.surgicalserenitysolutions.com/headphones

Preloaded MP3 players: www.surgicalserenitysolutions.com/MP3players

Please let me know if you have any questions! Thanks for reading!

By DrAlice|June 7, 2024|Music Medicine Breakthrough|0 Comments

Why music makes a difference in the perioperative period

Physicians in Korea standing with Dr. Cash

Speaking to Drs about the power of rhythmic entrainment.

Scientists are trained to be skeptical. And it’s a very good thing! When people’s lives are on the line, you want to be sure that everything you’re doing for the patient is maximizing their opportunities to survive and thrive. Using music during the perioperative period is one of those things that has proven to be very useful in decreasing anxiety and pain perception. And at the same time, to “DO NO HARM.”

One of the steps to becoming a physician is taking the ancient “Hippocratic Oath” and part of that oath requires that the physician promise to “primum non nocere” which means “first, do no harm.” I believe that one of the major benefits of using music during the surgical period is that music can never harm a patient. But far more than that, it can actually calm them prior to the beginning of the procedure, a time when Valium is often given routinely and without a thought of the fact that music could probably accomplish the very same thing but without the risk of side-effects.

What are common side-effects of Valium?

According to www.rxlist.com, common side-effects of Valium include:

drowsiness
tired feeling
dizziness
spinning sensation
fatigue
constipation
ataxia (loss of balance)
memory problems

And what are common patient reactions to serene, calming music?

lowered anxiety
feelings of peace
slow and steady heartbeat
deep and regular breathing
ability to forget current circumstances (temporarily)

The goal is education about the power of music

Through the past several hundred years, individual doctors and nurses have thought about using music during surgery and other medical procedures. I have read about doctors having live music in the operating room, but that’s not very practical and raises concerns about introducing all kinds of germs and bacteria into the operating room.

There are paintings from hundreds of years ago showing musicians attending a patient having surgery. This painting depicts “live Oud music during cardiac surgery.” and accompanies a medical study with the same name.

One of the basic premises in using music as medicine, whether for surgery or other medical procedures, is that the music must be pleasing, even if not familiar to the patient.

Every part of the world has its own music, its own music history, and its own musical instruments that have developed over thousands of years.

Offering the surgical patient a choice of music prior to surgery is very important and creates a sense of some choice and control for the patient. Most people go into surgery feeling very powerless and even out of control. Offering soothing music is a simple way to empower the patient and give them a sense of partnership.

Research on the use of music during the perioperative period

On my website you can find some of the most important recent studies on the use of music with different kinds of surgeries. Click here to see these studies and meta-analyses.

There have been very reputable studies done on music with cataract surgery, cancer surgeries, joint replacement surgeries, dental surgery and any medical procedures you can imagine. It’s really very exciting.

Surgical Serenity Solutions headphones But until 2009, there was not a single product on the market that could deliver the ideal music to the patient, during surgery, through cordless, pre-loaded headphones. In 2008, Surgical Serenity Solutions was awarded a U.S. Patent on the concept of having pre-loaded headphones for surgery patients for the specific purpose of reducing anxiety, pain perception and possibly the amount of medication required. In 2009 Surgical Serenity Solutions.started selling the headphones to patients.

Over the past 4-5 years we have shifted our focus from providing our headphones primarily to patients and instead, are now introducing them in larger quantities, to hospitals. Our dream is that most hospital systems will have the headphones waiting for the patients on the morning they arrive for surgery, or colonoscopies/endoscopies. Even labor and delivery suites, and ICUs are utilizing the many benefits of soothing music through headphones for patient who is anxious and fearful about their outcomes.

If YOUR hospital is interested in getting pre-loaded headphones in the OR, the ICU, the ER, or Labor and Delivery, click here to get prices and information on how they work. Each order of 12 or 20 headphones comes with 50 pair of disposable ear-piece covers and you can purchase more, as needed!

MP3 Player with Jazz Playlist and hospital branding And now, we have a new delivery device for our 5 therapeutic playlists! We are now offering small MP3 players that are already pre-loaded with the playlist of your choice. Hospitals can purchase these in bulk and GIVE them to patients after their procedure. To learn more click HERE.

Give your patients the patient experience they deserve and create a safer experience as well!

By DrAlice|September 2, 2022|Music and Anesthesia|0 Comments

Surgery with Music is becoming available around the world!

Surgery with Music is available in hospitals around the world

Surgery with music has been available in certain hospitals for many years. But it was always the exception, not the rule. In the late 20th century, and the early 21st centure, hospitals and medical schools began to take seriously all of the anecdotal reports that were being published in holistic medicine books and journals.

As the research came out, we had more and more empiracal evidence that surgery music can make significant differences in the amount of anxiety the patient experiences, the level of pain that the patients perceives, and the amount of nausea and vomiting the patient experiences, in the post-op period. These three things combine to reduce the overall time for the procedure to be performed and finally discharged from the hospital or surgery center.

By 2009 there was actually a product on the market to deliver the “scientifically-chosen, best music for surgery,” delivered through cordless headphones, which is the preferred choice for patients having surgery. The surgeon’s preferred music usually comes through a speaker in the operating room.

Now, patients have a choice of two kinds of headphones and a hospital can purchase a “Cloud Kit” that consists of 10-preprogrammed headphones, sitting on a USB hub, with a pop-up dispenser for disposable earpiece covers! The Cloud Kit is in many large hospitals around the world, as well as dental clinics.

If YOU, the patient, are having a dental surgery, root canal, extraction, or a medical procedure such as colonoscopy, cataract surgery or joint replacement, please consider getting yourself some of these amazing headphones!! Patients love them and usually end up requiring less medication, which leads to a faster and safer recovery! Just go to www.SurgicalSerenitySolutions.com/patient-products to purchase either headphone or the music download.

By DrAlice|June 28, 2018|Anesthesia, Music and Anesthesia, Surgery Music|0 Comments

New Study Finds music through headphones helps children and adolescents during surgery

An interesting new study appeared today about benefits of intraoperative music with children and adolescents. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28685824. The study was published online, prior to coming out in the medical journal, Acta Anesthesia Scandinavia. According to the study, “Hospitalization, surgery and anaesthesia may lead to new-onset maladaptive behaviour, emotional distress and trauma. This pilot study aims to investigate the influence of intraoperatively applied music on post-operative behaviour in children and adolescents.”

Apparently, many children ages 6-16 sometimes display new, maladaptive behaviors after undergoing surgery. The intent of the study was to determine whether listening to music through headphones could make a difference in the appearance of these behaviors and emotions.

Obviously, no one wants to have surgery, but for children and adolescents, it’s even scarier because they have little or nothing to say about the procedure. Parents and doctors are totally in charge! But we know that children and adolescents love music and music can take them away; transport them to a familiar “safe place” when established feelings and memories reside and where the fear of a strange environment and unknown people just disappear!

Music is an almost magical process and especially when it’s delivered through lightweight, cordless, pre-loaded headphones! After I had created the Surgical Serenity headphones for adults, I realized that children and adolescents could also really benefit and I started searching for the perfect music that would be familiar, comforting, and available. I decided to record my own, specially-chosen playlist of lullabies. These lullabies have been putting children to sleep for hundreds of years and bring back warm, safe, and comforting memories of parents, grandparents, and other caregivers arms and laps!

If your child or teen is preparing for surgery, or even dental work or immunizations, you can put these headphones on them the day of the procedure and they will play continusouly for 8 hours. There’s just something about putting on headphones that makes the world disappear and a warm blanket of sound descends on your child. For more information, go HERE.

By DrAlice|June 26, 2018|Common Fears in Surgery, Music and Anesthesia|0 Comments

Damaging Effects of Cortisol: yes, YOUR body makes it too!

What does CORTISOL have to do with surgery?! Cortisol is produced in the body as a direct response to stress and it has damaging effects on your body organs. When most people find that they are going to have to have surgery, they immediately feel a tremendous surge of stress and that stress caused an immediate surge of cortisol through the body. The damaging effects of cortisol can be mitigated by the use of soothing, steady, purely instrumental music, played through cordless headphones.

According to many doctors, cortisol can do everything from ravage and break down internal organs to lowering the immune system, to causing inflammation in the body, to producing more belly fat and breaking down muscle. We all produce cortisol, but the less we produce the better off we are!

Music therapy and music medicine have been studied extensively in regard to their ability to decrease the amount of cortisol a body produces in different stressful events. Specifically, I’ve looked for studies documenting music’s ability to decrease cortisol production in surgical patients. Here is a recent one that shows music’s power in this particular setting.

Effects of Music Listening on Cortisol Levels and Propofol Consumption during Spinal Anesthesia

Stefan Koelsch,^1,^2,^* Julian Fuermetz,^2,³ Ulrich Sack,⁴ Katrin Bauer,⁵ Maximilian Hohenadel,² Martin Wiegel,³ Udo X. Kaisers,³ and Wolfgang Heinke³

To read the entire study, go to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3110826/

The authors conclusion is : Our data show that listening to music during surgery under regional anesthesia has effects on cortisol levels (reflecting stress-reducing effects) and reduces sedative requirements to reach light sedation.

This is the reason that the Surgical Serenity Solution exists!! If YOUR patients do not have access to Surgical Serenity pre-loaded headphones, go NOW to www.SurgicalSerenitySolutions.com/hospitalheadphones and purchase our headsets in 5 different genres of therapeutic music, sequenced by a clinical musicologist. To hear samples, go to www.SurgicalSerenitySolutions.com/calmhttps://www.surgicalserenitysolutions.com/calm.

By DrAlice|August 5, 2015|Benefits of music during surgery, Music and Anesthesia|0 Comments

Surgery with Music: FAQ’s

Are you having surgery? Are you scared of the pain, the anesthesia, the time off work, the side-effects of all the medications you’ll be given? These are all common, and VALID concerns. Surgery is serious business, but there are times that it really must be done to improve quality of life, to prolong life, or to enhance life.

Over the past 5 or 6 decades, surgery has become a much safer endeavor as hospital OR conditions have improved and methods of sterilization and decontamination have stepped into the 21st century. Many companies have created tools to make the patient more comfortable during the entire procedure, from warming the sheets and giving the patient fuzzy foot-cover, to lightweight headphones that deliver specially-chosen music for surgery, wirelessly and cordlessly!

Here are some of the most frequently-asked questions that I get about the benefits of music during surgery:

What are the benefits of music during surgery:

Patients using music (through cordless headphones) pre-surgery, during and after surgery, report less fear and anxiety medication before procedure, less anesthesia during surgery, and less pain medication after surgery. They also report fewer side-effects from the anesthesia, such as nausea and vomiting, and a faster return to home, work and life in general! In addition, when patient receives the music through headphones, the surgeon can have his own more upbeat music, and the patient isn’t affected by that. Also, conversations that the doctors and nurses have, that patient doesn’t want to hear, will be obscured. Finally, with Baby boomers having more and more joint replacement surgeries, patients don’t have to hear the drilling, sawing and hammering that goes on.

2. What are the drawbacks of music during surgery: absolutely none!

3. Do the headphones block all sounds in the OR?: No, the surgical headphones are intended to greatly decrease the OR noises, but during regional anesthesia and surgery, the patient can still hear questions that the doctor might need to ask.

4. Will my doctors approve of this? Most doctors do approve of the use of headphones during surgery. The surgeon and the anesthesiologist both need to give their approval. It is important to print out our free article entitled “How to Talk with Your Doctor about Using Music During Surgery.”

5. How did you choose the music on the headphones?: I have been helping patients choose their perfect music for surgery for almost 25 years. I had been reading about the benefits of music in reducing medication and calming the patient, but through my own personal research and experience, I discovered that slow, steady, soothing instrumental music, that has the tempo of the healthy, resting heartbeat is ideal. This is what get the entrainment process going, and even when the patient is under general anesthesia, the body’s heartbeat, breathing and blood pressure all tend to stabilize and synchronize with the slow, steady pulse of the music.

6. Can I continue to use them after surgery?: Yes. The headphones include a USB cable and charger so that after your surgery or other medical procedure, you can connect the headphones to your laptop and load hundreds more pieces or songs of your choice. With care, your headphones should last for many years!

By DrAlice|April 4, 2014|Anesthesia, Characteristics of music for surgery, Common Fears in Surgery, Dangers and Side-effects of anesthesia, Headphones for other medical procedures, How music works, Music and Anesthesia, Surgery Music|0 Comments

Knee Replacement Surgery with Music

The aging baby-boomer population is filling up the hospitals nowadays. Our joints, especially are simply wearing out and luckily, they can now be replaced! Imagine what it was like when joints wore out and people just had to live with it. Results of worn-out joints included becoming sedentary, depressed and eventually dying of pneumonia. Of course this didn’t happen to everyone, but many people, for centuries, did have this happen.

We do live in a miraculous time! With antibiotics, artificial knees and hips, and machines that can exercise our knees and our lungs for us, what more do we need? I think that a great addition to this picture is music.

Ample research exists that document music’s beneficial effects before, during and after surgery. When the music is delivered through cordless, pre-programmed headphones, it’s even better! Recently I met with a lady who desperately needed knee replacement but was so fearful and anxious that she almost didn’t have the surgery. She had heard about the Surgical Serenity Solution and because she lives here in Louisville, KY, I was able to hand-deliver them and talk with her about how different this would be from previous surgeries.

Listen as she describes what her experience was like:

By DrAlice|February 14, 2014|Common Fears in Surgery, Music and Anesthesia|0 Comments

Surgical Serenity Headphones in the news!!

This article came out in Today’s Woman in December of 2013. We are trying to spread the word around the globe! Will you help? Turn to page 15 to see the article.

By DrAlice|February 11, 2014|Common Fears in Surgery, Dangers and Side-effects of anesthesia, Headphones for other medical procedures, Music and Anesthesia|1 Comment

Surgery with Music: What’s New in 2014

It’s really exciting to see so many advances in surgery on the horizon, and although I don’t wish surgery on anyone, it definitely will be happening all day, every day, around the world. What I am most interested in is seeing that everyone has the best possible chance for a positive outcome!

Many astute and perceptive surgeons and anesthesiologists have realized for a long time that music is a powerful and effective addition to the surgical suite, but most were not sure how best to implement this idea. The idea of using lightweight, behind the neck headphones for the patient, while allowing ambient music delivery for the surgeon, is an ideal solution that will be seen more and more in 2014.

Some other new developments in general surgery include:

Intraoperative radiation therapy for newly diagnosed breast cancer (December 2013)
Tumor seeding following endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine-needle aspiration of pancreatic tumors
Bedside ultrasound prior to skin abscess draining.

Can you imagine how helpful the soothing music headphones could be for patients undergoing any of the above procedures. And, of course, the calmer and more relaxed the patient is, the better the surgeon can do his or her job. It just makes sense to relax the patient with music before, during and after any surgical procedure with a method that has no side-effects and reduces recovery time as well as nausea and vomiting.

For more information, see www.SurgicalSerenitySolutions.com or email me at DrAlice@surgicalserenitysolutions.com.

By DrAlice|January 7, 2014|Music and Anesthesia, Music in the hospitals, Surgery Music|0 Comments

Some Side-effects of Anesthesia are Funny??

Are you worried about the side-effects of anesthesia? Obviously, general anesthesia is a powerful chemical process. As with any kind of anesthesia or surgery, there are serious risks. That’s why you want to do some careful research on the hospital you go to and who will do the surgery and the anesthesia. Some are better that others.

The sad case of Joan Rivers, recently, demonstrated that even the smallest procedure must be carefully planned and executed. Her procedure was quite routine, but something went wrong and she died after being in a coma for 3 or 4 days. This is a worst-case scenario, but you need to do your research and understand that likely, you will have pain from the incision and nausea and vomiting, dizziness, and possibly short-term memory loss from the anesthesia.

Then there are the side-effects that are actually humorous! There has been a story on television for the past two days about a young man who had just begun awakening from anesthesia. (Yes, he did have red hair, and redheads are known to be more susceptible to the effects of anesthesia than non-redheads!) It’s a charming story because as the guy is waking up, he looks over and his wife, but doesn’t recognize her. Apparently this sort of thing has happened to him before because his wife doesn’t seem to be too devastated. But when he turns a gets a good look at her, things get really funny and his wife couldn’t be happier at what comes out of his mouth! Enjoy!

By DrAlice|September 12, 2013|Anesthesia, Anesthesia and Redheads, Dangers and Side-effects of anesthesia, Funny side-effects of anesthesia, Music and Anesthesia|0 Comments