(MCT) CHICAGO—About halfway through the angiogram, Dr. Mark Goodwin sensed something was not right. The music was not loud enough.
So a nurse went to the stereo and cranked up the volume from a changing-the-spark-plugs-in-the-garage level to a hey-you-kids-turn-down-that-damn-music level on U2’s “Beautiful Day.”
Music is as common in operating rooms—or in this case, a catheterization lab at Edward Heart Hospital in Naperville, Ill.—as surgical masks or scalpels. Studies have shown it relaxes both doctors and patients, improves a doctor’s performance and lowers the amount of anesthesia a patient needs.
If you are going to have surgery or a medical procedure, chances are there will be a soundtrack.
“It’s sort of like if you’re doing a chore around the house,” said Goodwin, a cardiologist with Midwest Heart Specialists based at Edward. “You can have music on and still be very concentrated on what you’re doing. There are different areas of the brain that are able to process and do different things at different times. So when the music is on, although I hear the music, my focus is 100 percent on the patient.”
Goodwin said the loud volume at which he listens to music differentiates him from others.
But that’s not exactly how OR music is often portrayed. In television’s “Nip/Tuck” (9 p.m. Tuesdays, FX), for example, the show’s plastic surgeons often work to tunes such as “Santa Maria” by Gotan Project or “More Than This” by Roxy Music playing gently in the background.
Not always so, said the guys who would know.
“We don’t want anything particularly slow,” said Dr. Andrew Roth, an attending anesthesiologist at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago. “It’s got to be upbeat enough so you keep working, not feel like you’re dying.”
Ben Corpuz, clinic coordinator for interventional radiology at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, agreed.
“There is a beat to it, a rhythm they do follow,” he said. “It helps with the progress they’re making.”
So how do doctors go about selecting their music? Sometimes they let the patients decide.
“I guess most of the time, the first thing I do is ask the patient if there’s something they prefer,” Goodwin said. “Most of the patients don’t, but some will bring in a CD from home and that’s what we play.
“If they like something, even though they’re going to be asleep for a procedure, some people believe their hearing sense may still be preserved, and we want them to be relaxed and hear what they like.”
Corpuz said patients at Northwestern also get first crack at the CD player. But if they have no preference, the medical staff has free rein on the musical selection.
“It’s geared to the generation of the workers,” he said. “So if you have residents, they’re going to be younger, so they like the indie rock thing. Go older, and you get the alternative thing. It follows the decades of music.”
During the one-hour angiogram, Goodwin played songs by John Mayer, Jack Johnson, Five for Fighting, The Format, the Goo Goo Dolls, Everclear, Gnarls Barkley, OAR, Green Day and, of course, U2.
But no matter how much everyone enjoys music in the OR, doctors are always careful it does not get in the way. Roth said he keeps the music at a level where he can still hear his monitors.
“I have the last say when it comes to safety,” he said. “So if something is becoming distracting or too loud, patient safety has to be first.”
And Corpuz said he always uses volume control to safeguard his patients at Northwestern.
“It’s almost always playing, even in the hard procedures we do with neurology, brain and spine work that tends to be meticulous,” he said. “So they control their music more.”
But generally, the music plays on. The benefits are too great to ignore.
“I saw a study that showed that no matter what happens, if you just think of a song, it immediately releases the tension in your body and makes you relax,” Goodwin said. “If you think about times when you’re singing, generally you feel better. I do think that music touches our soul in a different way. And I think that anything that does that helps heal us.”
© 2006 Chicago Tribune
