Thursday, May 26, 2005

Music as anesthetic

From BoingBoing.net

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.
Link and Link to scientific paper abstract

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