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<\/div>Music could be a cheap way to help people be more comfortable after surgery<\/p>\n
Dragos Condrea\/Alamy<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n
Listening to music<\/a> after surgery seems to ease a patient\u2019s pain and anxiety, which could be a cheap and easy way to reduce painkiller use.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of people, when they are awakening from anaesthesia, are lost,\u201d says Eldo Frezza<\/a> at California Northstate University College of Medicine. \u201cThey have anxiety or maybe they feel pain of the surgery.\u201d<\/p>\n Research has repeatedly shown that music can be calming<\/a>, which prompted Frezza and his colleagues to investigate if it may help after an operation.<\/p>\n The team analysed the results of 35 studies that explored how listening to it immediately after surgery<\/a> affected people\u2019s pain, anxiety, heart rate and painkiller use.<\/p>\n Each study involved about 100 people, half of whom were asked to listen to music, of different genres, after abdominal or bone-related surgery. The studies varied in how long the participants did this, ranging from half an hour to until they were discharged.<\/p>\n The remaining participants \u2013 who were matched to the former group for age, sex and surgery type \u2013 didn\u2019t listen to music after their procedures.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Frezza\u2019s team \u2013 which presented the results at the American College of Surgeons congress in San Francisco, California \u2013 found that music seemed to reduce pain<\/a> levels by about 20 per cent, on average, according to self-reports using a scale running from 20 to 80. Those who listened to music also required less than half as much morphine while in hospital as those who did not.<\/p>\n The team also found that listening to music seems to reduce anxiety<\/a>. It lowered heart rates by around 4.5 beats per minute, on average, and reduced self-reported anxiety levels by about 2.5 points, also on a scale of 20 to 80.<\/p>\n \u201cA 2.5-point reduction is pretty small, but it\u2019s moving in the direction we want it to go,\u201d says Annie Heiderscheit<\/a> at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, UK.<\/p>\n