Music has the power to move us, but does it also have measurable health benefits? According to researchers at Drexel University in Philadelphia, music therapy can reduce pain and anxiety in patients with cancer.

The Drexel team conducted a systematic review of 30 randomized trials comparing a music intervention plus standard care vs. standard care with or without other adjunctive interventions. The trials included 1,891 patients with diverse types of cancer. Music interventions included music therapy by trained therapists or pre-recorded music offered by medical staff.

Music was associated with reduced anxiety and pain in 12 trials comprising 777 patients (level 1 [likely reliable] evidence). Music also improved mood (level 2 [mid-level] evidence) in three trials with 105 patients. There were no significant differences in depression. The review also suggested that music may have a small effect on heart rate, respiratory rate, and blood pressure, the clinical significance of which is unknown. (Bradt J, et al. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2011 Aug 10;(8)).

Overall, the findings are significant, though the authors note that only two of the trials included in the analysis were of high quality, the rest suffered from a variety of potential biases (inadequate allocation concealment, incomplete outcomes data, etc).

Thanks to the DynaMed editorial team for this article.

Editor’s Note: Holistic Primary Care would like to congratulate our friends at DynaMed for acing out four other clinical reference services in terms of their speed in updating and posting important new clinical information.

Independent researchers in Italy compared DynaMed, Clinical Evidence, EBM Guidelines, eMedicine and UpToDate on the speed with which the services tracked, analyzed and posted 128 major systematic reviews.

DynaMed had posted evidence summaries of 60% of these systematic reviews within 2 months of their initial publication, and 87% of them within 9 months of publication. None of the other clinical reference services had posted summaries of even 50% of the systematic reviews within 9 months (BMJ 2011 Sep 23;343:d5856).

Way to go, DynaMed! See? Nothing but the best for you HPCers!