Perioperative Music Listening on Anxiety, Analgesia Use and Patient Satisfaction

Some tissue injury is unavoidable during surgery, but pain and anxiety are (nearly as often) also unavoidable in the perioperative period. Acute post-operative pain and anxiety have been managed via pharmacological interventions such as opioid-based analgesia for over a century. However, non-pharmacological interventions - such as music - have also been shown to safe and cost-effective, to improve the overall patient experience, and improve outcomes across a variety of surgical settings. Music has been shown to decrease pain in the perioperative period, to reduce plasma, urine, and salivary cortisol levels, modulate the inflammatory response (natural killer lymphocytes), blood pressure, and heart rate.Additionally, anxiety scores and pain scores (measured using the visual analog scale (VAS)) have shown statistically significant reductions in the perioperative period, when music therapy was available.

From 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2016, there were 31,871 surgeries done in KK Women's and Children's Hospital (KKH). While music therapy in the hospital has been offered as a part of cognitive rehabilitation services or end of life care, there is little investigation found on its effect if used perioperatively in adult patients who undergo surgeries, especially in local setting. Based on the above rationale, the investigators shall therefore investigate the feasibility and practicability of deploying music listening in pain management in KKH, and further determine the nature of the music (duration, genre) by fitting the local context in order to improve the patient outcome in perioperative settings.

Inclusion criteria

• Healthy participants who are American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) 1 and 2 (with well-controlled medical problems);
• Undergo day surgery or same-day-admission gynecologic surgery;
• No hearing impairment.

Exclusion criteria

• Patients with significant respiratory disease and obstructive sleep apnea;
• Patients who are unable to read and understand the hospital anxiety questionnaire;
• Obstetric patients.