Study Finds Music Therapy Helps Cancer Patients

In Christopher Hitchens’ caustic 2010 essay “Tumortown“”about his battle with esophageal cancer the celebrated journalist singles out for scorn those who offered unsolicited advice on miracle cures, soothing tonics and nourishing diets.

The one piece of advice Hitchens’ heeds comes from a Cheyenne-Arapaho friend, who notes that all of her friends who turned to tribal medicine died almost immediately and if anyone offers him the same, he should “move as fast as possible in the opposite direction.”

Hitchens’ essay encapsulates the disdain that many feel for alternative and complementary cancer therapies ““ which is to say, anything outside of clinical medicine approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or experimental medical treatments. These therapies are, skeptics believe, quackery that will, at best, do nothing and, at worst, hasten your demise.

It may surprise these skeptics, then, that a scientific review publipdf) from 30 studies involving 1,891 participants showed music interventions, in the careful language of such research, may improve patients’ anxiety, pain mood, quality of life and vital signs. The studies evaluated music interventions as a complementary therapy used in conjunction with clinical treatments such as chemotherapy, surgery and radiation therapy.

They looked at music medicine, where recorded music is played for patients, and music therapy, which involves a therapist who engages the patient or plays an instrument in the room. Both showed positive results. Bradt said it was hard to evaluate whether one was better because there weren’t enough studies though