Music Intervention for Preoperative Anxiety and Acute Pain Among Mastectomy Patients

Anxiety is a common thing that patients experience when they are preparing to have a surgery. When this anxiety is not properly treated, the patients tend to consume more drugs in the operating room and it also cause their pain to increase after surgery. Pain after surgery is common among patients who have just had surgery. The pain that women who have had mastectomy feels after surgery is usually treated using pain killers. Yet, the pain killers are not enough to reduce the pain or cause some unwanted outcomes for the patients. Therefore, supplementing pain killers with music therapy appears to be a good way to reduce the pain and the unwanted outcomes that may arise from taking too much pain killers. This research is aimed to test how effective music that is selected by patients, considers their culture and psychological needs can be helpful in reducing anxiety before surgery and pain after surgery. Also its effect on blood pressure, breathing rate and pulse will be tested. The researcher also hope to know how satisfied patients who consent to participate in the study are with their pain management. The study will be done in two Nigerian hospitals and will mainly include women who have cancer, are above the age of 18, scheduled to have mastectomy, can read or write English or Pidgin, without any mental health challenge and agrees to participate in the study. This study hope to enrol up to 112 women and put them into two groups randomly, one group will receive the music intervention and the other group will receive the normal care provided by the hospital. Participants in the music intervention group will be added to a WhatsApp group on the week of their surgery. The WhatsApp session will be three times within the week of the surgery and each session will be about 30 minutes long. This study will use a combination of very short videos and voice notes (3 minutes) as well as real time chats and pictures to enhance communication on the group chat. The researcher will initiate discussions about participant's experience with breast cancer diagnosis, teach them about anxiety before surgery and pain after surgery. Then, they will ask questions that will be answered and also choose their type of music and send it to the group. The songs will be downloaded into a device and given to them on the day of surgery. They will continue to listen to the music after their surgery for the next two days. Before participants receive the music on the day of surgery, anxiety level and vital signs will be assessed. After the surgery, participant's pain level, vital signs and satisfaction with pain management before and after the intervention will be assessed. Those in the second group will receive a one-on-one chat with the researcher about pain after surgery. For all the participants, the study will be completed two days after the surgery.