The effects of playing music during surgery on the performance of the surgical team: A systematic review on published studies

Abstract

Objectives: The present study aims to evaluate the effects of playing music during surgery on the performance of surgical team (including surgeons, nurses and staffs) through a systematic review of published studies. Methods: Relevant database including Medline/PubMed, Scopus, and Science direct were searched up to November 2017 to find related articles. Results: after removing duplicates and irrelevant articles, our comprehensive literature search found 23 articles that met inclusion criteria. Among these studies, 17 studies reported positive effects of music on the performance of the surgical team included providing more relaxing and more pleasant environment, making them calmer, performing tasks more accurately and precisely, decreasing mental workload and task completion time, increasing situation awareness, reducing stress and anxiety and improving memory consolidation and making them to enjoy their work. On the contrary, 4 studies reported negative effects of music during surgery including negative impact on task completion task, poor auditory performance and more likely repeated requests. Two Remaining articles didn’t report any significant differences between the comparative groups. Because of different scales that were used in the studies, conducting meta-analysis on the data was not possible. Conclusion: Most studies have shown the positive effects of music on the surgical team during operation, however it should not be neglected for its adverse effects. Therefore, it is possible to improve the performance of the surgical team during operation by playing controlled music.