A Randomized Study on the Efficacy of Music Therapy on Pain and Anxiety in Nasal Septal Surgery

Introduction  Nasal septal surgery is one of the most common surgeries performed by otolaryngology surgeons; however, anxiety before surgery and postoperative pain remain a significant cause of morbidity. The search for a complimentary modality to reduce the symptoms and side effects has gained momentum in recent years. Objective  Music therapy is an exciting and inexpensive modality in this regard, but scientific evidence in terms of randomized clinical trials is still lacking for common otolaryngology surgeries. Hence, we performed the present study. Method  The sample of our study was composed of 59 patients, 30 of which were submitted to conventional medicine, while the remaining 29 were submitted to both conventional medicine and music therapy with music of their own choice, with 2 sessions per day, each lasting 30 minutes. This was performed using the generalized anxiety disorder-7 scale and the pain visual analogue scale until postoperative day 2, when the patients were discharged from the hospital. Result  On comparing the anxiety and pain scores between the two groups, the group who underwent music therapy showed a statistically significant reduction in anxiety both preoperatively ( p  < 0.0001) and postoperatively ( p  < 0.0001), as well as reduced postoperative pain starting from day 0 ( p  < 0.001), which continued until postoperative day 2 ( p  < 0.001). Conclusion  Music therapy is an effective adjunct in the control of anxiety and postoperative pain following nasal septal surgery.