Fox News Spotlights Mozart During Colonoscopy

The Daily Muse     


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This story was intriguing because I had recently been talking with some doctors that I know about extending some of my previous research. Many years ago I looked at the effect of sedative music on the anxiety levels of patients having pacemaker implant or heart caths. It was a small study and I am thinking about expanding on this ideas with more participants and also using live music instead of recorded music.


One of the limitations in my previous study was getting enough participants.  It was time consuming seeing only 2 or 3 patients per week.  One of the doctors that I spoke to recently suggested that I use music during colonoscopy procedures.  He argued that they do ten times as many of these procedures as pacemaker implants or angioplasty.  The patients still must be awake and their anxiety levels are usually elevated, so they would make good candidates for the use of music to affect anxiety.


The Fox News story is not talking about music therapy, but demonstrates what people already inherently know, that music can be a powerful influence on both the patient and the treatment team.  It is also pointed out in the video that using music is very cost-effective.  This is a great benefit to talk about in marketing music therapy!