Music speeds up recovery from surgery, reduces stress levels

Listening to music may help patients recover from surgery through a lower heart rate, reduced anxiety levels, less opioid use and lower pain, according to researchers.

A reduction in cortisol levels when listening to music may play a role in easing patients’ recovery, according to a meta-analysis presented at the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress 2024 in San Fransisco.

“When patients wake up after surgery, sometimes they feel really scared and don’t know where they are,” said Eldo Frezza, professor of surgery at California Northstate University College of Medicine. “Music can help ease the transition from the waking up stage to a return to normalcy and may help reduce stress around that transition.”

Frezza and study co-authors noted that unlike some more active therapies such as meditation or pilates which require considerable concentration or movement, listening to music is a more passive experience and can be incorporated by patients without much cost or effort almost immediately after surgery.

To reach this conclusion, the team analysed existing studies on music and its role in helping people recover from surgery, narrowing a list of 3,736 studies to 35 research papers.

In their analysis, the researchers found that the simple act of listening to music after surgery, whether with headphones or through a speaker, had noticeable effects on patients during their recovery period:

Patients who listened to music had a statistically significant reduction in pain the day after surgery. Across all studies, patient self-reported anxiety levels were reduced by about 2.5 points, or 3 per cent.

Patients who listened to music used less than half of the amount of morphine compared to those who did not listen to music on the first day after surgery, the research noted.

They also experienced a reduced heart rate (around 4.5 fewer beats per minute) compared with patients who did not listen to music.

“Although we can’t specifically say they’re in less pain, the studies revealed that patients perceive they are in less pain, and we think that is just as important,” said Shehzaib Raees, first author of the study.