Background: Hospitalization causes anxiety for many patients. It increases when patients anticipate their turn for cardiac catheterization. Music therapy reduces the psychophysiologic effects of anxiety and stress through the relaxation response.
Aim: To determine the effects of music therapy an anxiety, heart rate and arterial blood pressure in patients waiting for their scheduled cardiac catheterization.
Methods: In a quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest design, 101 subjects were randomly assigned to either the test group: those who listened to 20 minutes of preselected music, or the control group: those who received treatment as usual. Subject anxiety levels and physiological values were measured while waiting their turn for cardiac catheterization and just prior to departure to the cardiac lab.
Results: 63 males and 38 females participated in the study. There was a statistically significant reduction in anxiety in the test group alone (P = 0.003) and in comparing the test to the control group (P = 0.004). In comparing the initial and departure physiologic values, it was noted that both heart rate and systolic blood pressure dropped in the test group, but increased in the control group. Within gender groups, there were no statistically significant differences in hemodynamics or STAI scores, but between gender groups there were significantly higher diastolic blood pressure in males and STAI initial and departure scores for females.
Discussion: Patients waiting for their cardiac catheterization benefit from music therapy. Anxiety and the heightened physiological values elicited by the stress response are reduced. Results also suggest that women waiting for cardiac catheterization experience a higher level of anxiety than males.