Music eases surgery and speeds recovery, study finds
bbc.com
bbc.com
At one point things got a bit intense as apparently I have very hard bones - which meant that quite a bit of force was being used. The music playing during this part of the procedure was "No Time for Caution" - which I thought was hilarious... and this fact kind of took my mind off of things.
My dentist has overhead TVs in all of the rooms. Before a longer appointment I asked if I could bring some over-ear headphones to connect to the TV. Surprisingly nobody had asked that before but they were fine with it. The headphones drowned out the drilling and other noises and helped me zone out into some shows.
[During the bone graft I did open my eyes briefly and saw a small for clearly identifiable circular saw].
>>The patients were asked to choose their preferred music from two prerecorded instrumental musical pieces instituted as the music therapy. We used non lyrical, soft, slow tempo, relaxing instrumental musical pieces of either flute [click here for audio]or piano [click here for audio]as the choices presented to the patient.The musical pieces were selected based on their slow and meditative tempo (60-100 beats per minute), and only non -lyrical instrumental piano or flute based versions were chosen.The flute version which was preferred by most patients was a combination of Raga Yaman and Raga Kirwani. Raga Yaman is bright and uplifting and Raga Kir wani is known for its soothing and calming effects. Combining these two Hindustani classical ragas provides musically uplifting qualities that could be helpful in reducing the stress associated with surgical procedures and control the hemodynamic responses to surgery. Noise cancelling headphoneswere used to play the instrumental pieces at 60db. The musical piece was played for the entire duration of the surgery on loop using blue tooth connectivity of the headphones with a mobile phone.<<
I think the article should focus more on good music elements versus bad music elements. My brain gets annoyed at bad music. Good music can be useful though, in particular for relaxing. I normally dislike jazz-elements, but Sade for instance is acceptable (not pure jazz, but she uses jazzy elements).
I don't particularly like Mozart but I'd be an idiot to say it's not good music. On the other hand most people agree Taylor Swift does not make good music, having released lots of samey 4 chord songs with incredibly simple melodies, but she's one of the most listened artists of all time.
The complexity of the music or the technical skill of the artist has nothing to do with it being good or bad. Music anywhere on the spectrum from simple ambient noise to symphonic formalism to simple and infectious can be good or bad based on the taste of the listener.
Dissecting the Bloodthirsty Bliss of Death Metal: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18335308
Death metal music inspires joy not violence: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19383699
We know sleep is so critically important to health, yet everything about most hospitals seems basically incompatible with proper sleep: beeping, lights, middle-of-the-night blood draws, shared rooms, no sense of day or night. Not dissimilar to how how we know that people make terrible decisions when they’re sleep deprived, but continue to have resident doctors work unreasonable hours, this is a status quo bias that harms people.
Insanity.
The hospital reminds me of Walmart. Soulless as a bag of hammers but technically proficient and efficient. Carnivorous. Insectile.
https://netlabels.org/electronic-music/
And many artists still publish CDs, vinyl records, and other physical artifacts just like they have for ~most of our collective lifetimes. If you want new generations to experience that kind of thing, then buy some of it for them to experience.
(Or, you know: If that seems like too much work or too much money, then a streaming subscription is only about 10 bucks a month. I spent a lot more than that on music when I was a kid.)
I presume such souls may wither away and die, while in a coma, as a person "helpfully" plays very annoying sounds 24x7.
An alternate, is I do see some very strong preferences for music, with strongly expressed dislikes, even among music lovers. I can imagine the same, someone in a coma giving up and dying, to "get away" from the horror.
(Meant as an amusing thought, I doubt any would vacate this world to escape)
"Welcome to the jungle, we got fun and games..."
It was not the calming music she was expecting. She still jokes about it.
It might be crass way to say it, but it's a real worthwhile line of inquiry.
Don't think you can smack any beat on someone's head and it will cure cancer. It's not all equal.
Broad strokes here... if you look at another vibrational medium for parallels: the colour red can indicate something about the chemical contents of a material, and thus the effects it may have. A soft black carrot may not have the same beneficial qualities as a crisp red, purple, or white carrot...
I don’t know what counts as Music to you, but I sure hope you’re not out here trying to promote your particular taste as somehow more refined, because we know a lot about how that is usually just good old classist, generational, or racist biases peeking out.
But other than weird avant-garde stuff that seems to intentionally try to not have a beat, I agree all music tends to be sounds with some beat.
The point is that designing laws, regulations, guidelines, safety standards, etc, based on "intuition" is not very rational.
I tell you I feel good if there's more greenery in the city, you want proof to see "how" good before you build more parks?
"Effects of things on depression" doesn't seem like such a crazy thing to need to quantify.
> I tell you I feel good if there's more greenery in the city, you want proof to see "how" good before you build more parks?
A very disingenuous comparison, I think. There's a pretty big difference between that and "What is the effect of certain environmental stimuli during surgery"
I'd really rather not have surgeons explore this question on their own.
I don't disagree that we don't need nearly as much data on some things as others - but I do still want data supporting reasons to spend millions of public dollars.
How much resource to allocate to this treatment vs other treatments having a positive effect.
Somewhere there ends up being a trade off that I will caricature as "Do we want another hospital OR another park?"
(All the above is idealised, the biggest win that moves the efficient frontier outwards is effectively fighting corruption and being vigilant defending the gains made. This seems to be universal across countries and cultures).
Ask to have it played in the room? Sure. Want to listen on your own device? We don’t want to be responsible for loss or damage to that device. Want to use earbuds? Same problem if you’re going to be sedated at all, plus there is also the risk of damage to you if there’s metal anywhere.
One of the most commonly used instruments in surgery is electrocautery. A large pad is placed on (usually) a leg and is one electrode; the other is the instrument tip that does the burning. In theory, any metal in the current path could be a point for arcing. This is why you are asked to remove piercings (see your piercer for silicone plugs to fill the holes during surgeries). We don’t want to torch you.
I’m an anesthesiologist. Some of the risks we are guarding against are more theoretical than practical, but until the 1950’s all useful anesthetic gases were flammable and so protocols were focused on not setting the patients or the operating room on fire, and while we no longer have conductive floors and grounding chains around our waists, we do still worry about setting patients on fire (alcohol is still a common solvent for skin prep solutions). And we don’t want to lose or damage your stuff.
I had the option of a local or general anesthetic, but everyone acted like it was no big deal so I chose the local. I've had tooth cavities drilled without anesthesia and was expecting something like that. It was the most painful thing I've ever experienced, where I've also experienced severe food poisoning. I almost threw up and almost passed out just from the pain.
When it happened, the doctor gaslit me and told me it was just in my head. In my follow-up appointment, he admitted it was a common occurrence in that procedure, but they didn't like to tell people about it because it might scare them away and they didn't stop to administer more anesthesia because "it's a quick procedure."
oh that's interesting. From headline I had assumed we're talking post op
Nothing against the BBC but the most thoughtful journalist has all the scientific knowledge of Tarot Reader’s cat.
Anyway, n=56 which is fine I guess but leaves loads of margin for error.
Personally, I had a cystoscope and at the time had fancy health insurance so went to a bling London hospital and the surgeon insisted I listened to music - saying exactly what this article said. It lowers cortisol after, makes you less restless during and improves patient reported outcomes.
You can look up what a cystoscope is, I elected to do it with a blocker rather than with a general anaesthetic. All I will say is that track Shadowboxin’ by GLA is now completely unlistenable for me!
Let’s not forget that the author is a person too, just cause you don’t like it doesn’t mean you’ve got any place to talk down on them.
Like, take this exact article as a great example. I’m sure Mr Biswas is genuinely very intelligent and thoughtful and a great journalist but having him write a science article is unfair on him and on readers.
Doesn’t even have an undergraduate in a science subject, has never worked as a scientist, and his job is as a national correspondent.
Perhaps my wording prioritised humour over fairness - I’ll take the criticism on that. But I don’t think my core point was wrong. How can you “communicate” something you yourself don’t understand?
Finally, I want to stress again - it’s not his fault. The system is broken.
The article strips out that narrow context and generalises. Phrases like “music eases surgery and speeds recovery” and “strongest evidence yet” extrapolate from a sample of 56 people undergoing one procedure to “surgery” in general. The paper doesn’t measure global recovery outcomes, discharge times, or longer-term effects. Satisfaction and pain scores are even reported as comparable between groups (P=0.361 and P=0.07).
There’s also mechanistic speculation in the article (implicit memory, psychological responses, “humanising the operating room”) that isn’t in the study’s data. The paper reports dose differences and perioperative physiological measures—not neuropsychological mechanisms.
Ooh, that sounds like p-hacking. How many other protocols, and other potential outcomes in general, did they look at before picking the one to publish? If it's on the order of 20, then we can expect they'd encounter such a result by pure chance.
The headlines says that music “speeds recovery” but the paper specifically says that patients had similar recovery profiles.
The media article overall overstates the findings of the study. It’s a very specific study on a specific cohort and a specific surgery (minimally invasion) but the article implies strongly that music helps with all surgery.
Also the paper specifically doesn’t touch on medial outcomes from the music - that’s fine as science since it’s granular, but it’s a pretty big thing to miss in the article.
The article misses a bunch of further questions that need more research. How does the patient playing music affect the surgeon? Is it music in general or specific music that helps? Is the patient choosing the music relevant?
“Reshape how hospitals think about surgery”? Not really, hospitals already use music in surgery so it’s not going to “reshape” anything. Over dramatisation.
It’s also just very shallow. Makes no mention of existing science/practice for example. Didn’t speak to any other researchers.
Look, the article is fine-ish but it’s just a regurgitation of the paper with more dramatisation and no analysis. Just post the paper especially on HN.
This goes both ways: how can you (as a scientist) communicate something when you don’t understand communication?
The answer to both is to let the person who understands it and the person who is good at communication collaborate.
It gave the impression that this specific journalist knows nothing, which is unfair.
I was trying to be funny (always risky online) and intended to be speaking humorously about science journalism in generally. In hindsight, my phrasing doesn’t do that, and actually doesn’t communicate what I was saying very well.
I stand by my criticism of science journalism in general and my request that the article is just posted. But my wording was very rough, ultimately didn’t make the point I intended and yes might frustrate some people. If someone is extremely upset or hurt by my comment then, I think, at some stage that isn’t my fault and the Internet might not be right for that person.
> If someone is extremely upset or hurt by my comment then, I think, at some stage that isn’t my fault and the Internet might not be right for that person.
But then you're like "If you're upset, whatever, that's on you" - even though nobody's really suggested someone is "extremely" upset or hurt by your comment.
Also, you can be funny on the Internet - it has nothing to do with that. The real question is whether you can be funny without degrading people.
If I flip a coin 56 times and it always falls on head, I can be pretty much certain that it's not a fair coin. I wouldn't need to flip it 1000 times. We are all someone else's "know-nothing hack"...