Scores of studies published over the years have looked at the power of music to ease pain after surgery.
Researchers started combing the medical literature for studies about music’s soothing power and they found hundreds of small studies suggesting some benefit.
Dr. Catherine Meads at Brunel University focused her attention on 73 rigorous, randomized clinical trials about the role of music among surgery patients.
She said “As the studies themselves were small, they really didn’t find all that much, But once we put them all together, we had much more power to find whether music worked or not.
“It could be anything from Spanish guitar to Chinese classical music.
“Unlike drugs, Music doesn’t seem to have any side effects.
“If surgeons are listening to music, it can be a bit of a distraction, so it may be it’s not such a wise idea to have it during the operation itself,” but after the operation, music is acceptable.
She and her colleagues concluded that surgery patients who listened to music, either before, during or after surgery, were better off in terms of reduced pain, less anxiety and more patient satisfaction.
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