Effects of Patient-Preferred Music on Anxiety, Pain, and Quality of Recovery After Knee Arthroplasty Under Spinal Anesthesia: A Randomized Controlled Trial.
Burak Nalbant, Gokhan Erdem, Muhammed Kose and 3 others
PMID 41999142WHAT IT FOUND
Patients who listened to their own music through headphones during knee replacement under spinal anesthesia reported less anxiety after surgery and better recovery.
Pain was mostly similar, but music patients reported less pain at one later postoperative check.
Key findings
01Postoperative state anxiety was lower in the music group than in the control group (36.09 ± 4.36 vs 42.27 ± 6.21; difference 6.18 points; p = .001).
02Postoperative Quality of Recovery-15 scores were higher in the music group (124.84 ± 11.48 vs 117.75 ± 10.67; p = .007).
03Pain at 12 hours was lower in the music group (median 3 vs 4; p = .001), and fewer music patients required rescue analgesia (13 vs 22; p = .035).
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The study was done in one centre with Turkish patients, so it may not apply to other hospitals, languages, or cultures. Some patients were excluded after randomization because of sedation, inadequate spinal anesthesia, incomplete questionnaires, or loss to follow-up, which may affect the comparison. Patients knew whether they listened to music, and only the assessor was blinded, so subjective anxiety, recovery, satisfaction, and pain ratings may be influenced. Music was given alongside several standard perioperative treatments, so the effect of music alone cannot be isolated. Pain results were inconsistent across time points, with a difference only at a later assessment. The study did not retain item-level questionnaire responses, so internal consistency could not be checked in this sample.
Declared interests
The authors reported no financial support and no potential conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that music alone caused the benefit. All patients also received midazolam, spinal bupivacaine anesthesia, oxygen, an adductor canal bupivacaine block, scheduled acetaminophen, and tramadol for pain, so the contribution of any single component cannot be separated.