Related Experiment Video
Updated: Dec 29, 2025

Clinical Practice Protocol of Creative Music Therapy for Preterm Infants and Their Parents in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit
Published on: January 7, 2020
The effectiveness of music therapy for patients with cancer: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Yanfei Li1,2, Xin Xing3, Xiue Shi4,5
1Evidence Based Social Science Research Center, School of Public Health, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China.
Aims:
To assess the effectiveness of music therapy on the quality of life, anxiety, depression and pain of patients with cancer.
Design:
Systematic review.
Data Sources:
Five electronic databases were searched in September 2018 for randomized controlled trials evaluating music therapy for patients with cancer.
Review Methods:
The quality of the studies was assessed using the risk of bias tool recommended by the Cochrane Handbook Version 5.1.0 and the Revman version 5.3 software was used to perform the meta-analysis. The outcomes were overall quality of life, anxiety, depression and pain.
Results:
A total of 19 trials evaluating 1,548 patients were included in this study, of which 765 were in the control group and 783 in the experimental group. Compared with standard care, music therapy can significantly increase the score of the overall quality of life in patients with cancer. In addition, music therapy was found to be more effective for decreasing the score of anxiety, depression and pain.
Conclusion:
Music therapy can improve the overall quality of life of patients with cancer, with an observed optimal intervention duration of 1-2 months. Meanwhile, anxiety, depression and pain are improved as well. Nevertheless, high-quality trials are still needed to further determine the effects of music intervention in supportive cancer care.
Related Concept Videos
Cancer Survival Analysis
Cancer Therapies
However, cancer treatments can pose several challenges, as therapies used to kill cancer cells are generally also toxic to normal cells. Moreover, cancer cells mutate rapidly and can develop resistance to chemical agents or radiation therapy. Besides, all types of cancer cells may not respond to the same therapy. Some cancer cells respond to one...
Targeted Cancer Therapies
There are several types of targeted therapies against...
Treatment Resistant Cancers
Techniques of therapeutic communication I: Active Listening, Sharing Observations, Validation, and Using Touch
Therapeutic communication is not the same as social interaction. Social interaction has no goal or purpose and consists of casual information sharing, whereas therapeutic communication has a plan or purpose for the conversation. Therapeutic...
Tumor Immunotherapy
