Music and Anesthesia Archives - Page 5 of 5 - Surgical Serenity Solutions

Music as Anesthesia Study Done at Yale: results are postive!

According to a new study, listening to music when you go under the surgical knife can significantly reduce your need for sedation. Anesthesiologists at the Yale School of Medicine ran a study that included 90 patients undergoing “urological procedures with spinal anesthesia and patient-controlled IV propofol sadation.” From a press release about the paper, published in the journal Anesthesia & Analgesia:

The subjects wore headphones and were randomly assigned to hear music they liked, white noise or to wear no headphones and be exposed to operating room noise. Dropping a surgical instrument into a bowl in the operating room can produce noise levels of up to 80 decibels, which is considered very loud to uncomfortably loud.

What they found is that blocking the sounds of the operating room with white noise did not decrease sedative requirements of listening to operating room sounds. Playing music did reduce the need for sedatives during surgery.

Dr. Alice Cash has created wireless/cordless headphones for surgery that are pre-programmed by a clinical musicologist (herself) with the most ideal music for surgery. This happens to be classical music and since the patient is asleep (under general anesthesia) it is more important to have the right tempo of music and the right mood music, than to let the patient choose what they’d like to hear…if they could hear it! To read more about these headphones, click here.

Dr. Cash also has a download of this ideal music availalbe here. You can download the music onto your own iPod or MP3 device and take it into surgery with you.

The wireless headphones are already in use at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota as well as the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. If you, or someone you love, is having surgery in the near future, please check out these options. It could just save your life!

By DrAlice|September 12, 2010|Anesthesia, Characteristics of music for surgery, Dangers and Side-effects of anesthesia, How music works, Music and Anesthesia, Surgery Music|0 Comments

Surgery, Anesthesia, and Music

How many thousands of people around the world have surgery or a surgical procedure each day? Considering that most municipal hospitals have at least twenty operating rooms that are in use for 12-18 hours per day, we can safely assume that there are at least 50,000 per day. Each day people have adverse reactions to the anesthesia associated with their surgery, whether a local anesthesia, a regional anesthesia or a general anesthesia. Common side-effects are:

Nausea
Dizziness
Blurred vision
Temporary loss of memory
Loss of appetite
Headache

Of course general anesthesia carries the most serious risks and as a direct result of the changes in blood pressure and heart rhythms, heart attack and stroke during surgery can occur. According to WebMD, “death or serious illness or injury due solely to anesthesia is rare and is usually also related to complications from the surgery. Death occurs in about 1 in 250,000 people receiving general anesthesia, although risks are greater for those people with serious medical conditions.”

But wait! Why subject your self to the risks and complications when you can add music to the mix and greatly reduce the amount of anesthesia you need to be given? The fields of music therapy and nursing research have conducted hundreds of studies documenting music’s benefit before, during and after surgery. The phenomenon of entrainment is incredibly powerful and easily synchronizes a person’s heartbeat and breathing. When delivered through headphones it is doubly powerful because the slow, steady instrumental music goes directly to the brain, through the 8th cranial nerve, and entrains the bio-rhythms while simultaneously blocking operating room conversations and operating room sounds which can be quite un-nerving. For example, during joint replacement, there is hammering, drilling and sawing! Even when a patient is under general anesthesia, some of sounds penetrate into the subconscious and can cause the patient to wake up with severe anxiety and even panic.

When the patient brings the ideal music into surgery with headphones or ear buds to deliver it, the patient usually requires less anxiety meds before, less anesthesia during, and less pain and anxiety medication afterward! it is such a simple intervention, but few hospitals provide music for the patient in the operating room. My goal is to educate the public and the medical community and this easy-to-implement, very low-cost, and totally danger-free procedure. Feel free to contact me if I can help you with your upcoming procedure.

By DrAlice|July 17, 2010|How music works, Music and Anesthesia, Surgery Music|0 Comments

How do we know that music affects amount of anesthesia?

This fascinating video shows how anesthesia affects the body and how anesthesiologists monitor the patients level of consciousness and awareness. Music therapists have confirmed that music does affect the amount of anesthesia needed to keep the patient asleep and pain-free.

By DrAlice|June 3, 2010|Music and Anesthesia|0 Comments

Interesting history about anesthesia

There is so much in this world that we take for granted…we have to! We can’t be experts on everything and especially when it comes to the medical world, we must trust that our doctors know what they’re talking about. However, doctors are human, like everyone else, and they do make mistakes. We must decide for ourselves how much information we want to get about any particular procedure or test.

In line with this, I thought my readers might be interested to know a little more about the history of anesthesia. Enjoy!

The date of the first operation under anesthetic, Oct. 16, 1846, ranks among the most iconic in the history of medicine. It was the moment when Boston, and indeed the United States, first emerged as a world-class center of medical innovation. The room at the heart of Massachusetts General Hospital where the operation took place has been known ever since as the Ether Dome, and the word “anesthesia” itself was coined by the Boston physician and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes to denote the strange new state of suspended consciousness that the city’s physicians had witnessed. The news from Boston swept around the world, and it was recognized within weeks as a moment that had changed medicine forever.But what precisely was invented that day? Not a chemical – the mysterious substance used by William Morton, the local dentist who performed the procedure, turned out to be simply ether, a volatile solvent that had been in common use for decades. And not the idea of anesthesia – ether, and the anesthetic gas nitrous oxide, had both been thoroughly inhaled and explored. As far back as 1525, the Renaissance physician Paracelsus had recorded that it made chickens “fall asleep, but wake up again after some time without any bad effect,” and that it “extinguishes pain” for the duration. What the great moment in the Ether Dome really marked was something less tangible but far more significant: a huge cultural shift in the idea of pain. Operating under anesthetic would transform medicine, dramatically expanding the scope of what doctors were able to accomplish. What needed to change first wasn’t the technology – that was long since established – but medicine’s readiness to use it.

How does this apply to the acceptance of music during surgery? I’ll let you draw the parallels because I think it is fairly self-evident. Music has been used in medical settings for centuries. Evidence of this can be found easily by simply Googling “history of music in medicine.” Music is one of the most ancient and powerful of medical/healing interventions. But those of us who believe this fervently must get the word out to our doctors and have proof in hand. My blogs and my websites are filled with the facts and the documentation you need. If you want more, just email me through the blog or through my website, www.HealingMusicEnterprises.com.

By DrAlice|June 9, 2009|Anesthesia, Anesthesia history, Common Fears in Surgery, Dangers and Side-effects of anesthesia, Music and Anesthesia|0 Comments

Benefits of Less Anesthesia

As I talk to people about the benefits of music during surgery, invariably I get the question, “But Alice, why would you want less anesthesia during surgery…I want MORE anesthesia!” OK, I know what you’re thinking: you don’t want to risk feeling any pain or being “accidentally awake” though the doctors think you are asleep. Yes, there’s been a lot in the news about that recently. Here are some of the many benefits of using less anestheisa:

anesthesia can take up to 6 months to completely leave your system
all bodily systems are brought to an almost complete halt by anesthesia, severe constipation being a common result of this
anesthesia is fraught with adverse reactions in patients including allergy and just plain sever side-effects
side-effects include prolonged nausea, dizziness, fuzzy thinking, rashes, double vision and depression
the less anesthesia you have, the sooner you can leave the hospital, begin your healing journey and get on with your life!

If you could have beautiful music playing through headphones cordless, self-contained, lightweight headphones during your procedure and take less anesthesia without an increase in pain, wouldn’t you do it?? Please let me know! Thank you!

By DrAlice|February 17, 2009|Dangers and Side-effects of anesthesia, Fear of anesthesia, Music and Anesthesia, Pediatric anesthesia|0 Comments

How music affects the body during surgery

Why use music during surgery? This is one of the frequent questions asked when I go out into the world and quite understandable. In our society, music is thought of primarily as entertainment. Yes, people put it on their iPod or car CD player or home stereo system to chill-out, energize, or just as background music to their day.
Our world is full of music: TV, radio, movies and the ubiquitous iPod but music can also have powerful therapeutic benefits. When used during surgery music can help make the heart rate steady, the breathing steady, and the blood pressure moderate and steady. As a result, you will need less anesthesia to stay relaxed and sound asleep during your procedure. If this sounds too good to be true, just Google “music and surgery research” to see the hundreds of studies that have been conducted on this. There is absolutely no doubt about music’s effectiveness!
If you’d like to get the music that I have carefully and scientifically chosen for surgery, click on the link in the upper left corner. You can download it directly to your iPod or other MP3 player! Don’t hestitate to contact me with any questions. Best wishes for your successful surgery!

By DrAlice|November 20, 2008|Characteristics of music for surgery, Music and Anesthesia, Rhythmic entrainment, Surgery and Mind-Body Relaxation|0 Comments

Surgery with music invention coming along

This week I’ve been on vacation in Florida and I’ve had the distinct pleasure of talking at length with my original music medicine mentor, Dr. Arthur Harvey. I am now in the final stages of choosing music that will be used with my music and surgery invention and we have heard back from the patent office. I am also required to get FDA approval and so am going through the hoops and the red tape to get that.
In the end, I believe that all the money I’ve spent and all the work I’ve done will be well worth it because this device will change the way surgery is approached by both the doctors and the patient. I’m really excited about it and wanted to share with you a little interview that was done with me today as I was leaving the beach here on Lido Key. Enjoy!

By DrAlice|September 29, 2007|Music and Anesthesia|0 Comments