Awake intensive care unit patients who received music therapy were less anxious than those who did not.

Music therapy improves well-being in hospice patients, distracts patients during endoscopy, and helps treat depression in elders. Could it also decrease anxiety in critically ill patients?

Investigators randomized 373 awake and interactive intensive care unit (ICU) patients to one of three groups: patient-directed music through noise-cancelling headphones (with a visit by a music therapist to find preferred music and twice-daily prompts to listen to music), patient-initiated noise-cancelling headphone use only, or usual care. Anxiety was assessed daily with a 100-point visual-analog scale (VAS; range, 0 = “not anxious at all” to 100 = “most anxious ever”), and sedation doses and frequency were analyzed post hoc.

During a mean follow-up of 6 days, daily VAS scores of patients who received patient-directed music were significantly lower (by a mean of 19 points) than those of patients who received usual care; the headphones-alone group scored nonsignificantly lower (by a mean of 8 points) than the usual-care group. Sedation use was somewhat lower in the music-treated group.

Comment: As an editorialist notes, this trial has several limitations, including lack of a standardized sedation protocol and use of an unvalidated anxiety-assessment tool. Despite this, the results suggest that an inexpensive intervention like patient-directed music in the ICU could help limit use of sedating medications and all the complications associated with them.

Source: Journal Watch General Medicine