BUFFALO, N.Y., May 26 (UPI) -- Several studies have shown music has a positive role in controlling pain and stress in medical and dental procedures, but most U.S. doctors do not hand out CD players and headphones in the waiting room, let alone the examining room.
I have yet to encounter anything except old magazines in a doctor's waiting room and nothing except posters of the organs of the body in the examining room during the lonely hour wait for the doctor.
This is not the case with many dentists, however. In some offices, not only is there a selection of music CDs, but also DVDs of movies patients can watch while getting their cavities filled.
"Dentists have been using music to help relax patients since I was in dental school -- back then we were using 8-track tapes," Kimberly Harms, an American Dental Association consumer advisor and practicing dentist in Minneapolis, told UPI's Caregiving.
"Now we offer DVDs, and the patient can choose to watch on a screen in the room or using video glasses that allow the patient to block out everything except the movie," Harms said. "Children especially like to put on the video glasses and watch a movie. They focus on the plot and not the procedure. It relaxes them and in turn it helps the dentist to relax as well -- we love it."
She said dentists always have been in the forefront of trying to make patients as comfortable and relaxed as possible, but the video glasses are particularly effective.
"I recently had to get two root canals done on myself, so I watched the whole 'Jane Austin,' it was wonderful," Harms said. "The procedure didn't bother me at all. What I remember of the root canals was Jane Austin -- something I would never ordinarily have time to watch, but it's also great for the dentist, with the patient more relaxed, so are we."
Medical surgeons have used music to help them relax in the operating room for decades, but overall doctors have been quite a bit slower to adopt music as a way to relax their patients.
Karen Allen, a social psychologist at the University at Buffalo Department of Medicine, has been studying environmental influences on behavior or physiology. In 1994, she published a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association that found surgeons performed better at laboratory tasks when listening to music they selected.
Allen studied 50 male surgeons, all volunteers, who said they were music enthusiasts. All thought music was beneficial and all listened to music during surgery.
One group of surgeons performed the task without music, one group performed with music they selected and one group listened to an orchestral piece used in commercially available stress-reduction audio tapes: Johann Pachelbel's "Canon in D Major." Those listening to the music performed tasks better and experienced less autonomic cardiovascular reactivity, according to Allen.
Cardiovascular reactivity reflects the physiological changes from a resting or baseline state to some type of psychological or physical challenge or stressor. It is widely thought individuals showing exaggerated cardiovascular responses to stressful conditions may be more at risk for hypertension or coronary heart disease.
"The surgeons who chose their own music did the best," Allen told UPI. "Being able to select music seems to be key to the benefit, I was in a hospital waiting room where a person played on a piano and I found it dreadful -- mainly because of the way the person was playing and because of some of the selections, which were mainly classical -- with some (Frank) Sinatra."
Allen did a follow-up study of elderly adults who listened to their choice of music during out-patient eye surgery for cataracts or glaucoma.
In the study, published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, Allen found the patients who listened to music experienced significantly lower heart rate, blood pressure and cardiac work load than patients who did not listen to music.
Heart rate and blood pressure of all patients shot up the morning of the surgery, but the measures of cardiovascular stress dropped significantly in the music group within 10 minutes of listening. It remained low and only the music group experienced cardiovascular measures nearly at baseline, Allen said.
Despite a number of studies showing music helps patients deal with stress and helps them become more relaxed, the healthcare industry seems out of touch with the findings.
When Allen's mother, who lives on Long Island, N.Y., went to get her eye operation, she printed out the study and gave it to her eye doctor. His response was he did not have to listen to anybody in Buffalo.
Despite such setbacks, Harms is optimistic that the medical community eventually will integrate music into its procedures and therapy.
For those who think music might help them relax the next time they visit the dentist or at an outpatient medical procedure, Allen and Harms recommended calling ahead and checking to see if listening to a CD player or an MP3 player would be a problem. If not, they said, "bring your own music."
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Alex Cukan is an award-winning journalist who has covered major criminal trials, the campaign of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but she has always considered her real job is that of caregiver. E-mail: [email protected]
