Interactive music therapy on stress level reduction in women submitted to ivf/icsi. Prospective randomized study

Abstract

Objective: To identify the effects of interactive music therapy on stress levels in women undergoing high com-plexity infertility treatments. Methods: Prospective randomized study involving 113 women treated in the Reproduction Human Laboratory of the Clinics Hospital of the Federal University of Goiás State, submitted to in vitro fertilization/intracytoplasmic sperm injection. We used Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale, and Lipp’s Stress Symptoms Inventory for Adults. In the Intervention Group, we used small and easy to play per-cussive musical instruments, a guitar, voice, and a record-er. We used interactive music therapy approach individual-ly, applied before baseline ultrasound scan, oocyte pick-up, and embryo transfer. We analyzed the data using the R. Paired Student t-test to compare the results. Results: Comparison of the stress levels by Depres-sion, Anxiety and Stress Scale between the groups in the fi-nal moment of data retrieval resulted in 23.13 (SD±10.51; n=32) in the Control Group and 16.12 (SD±7.87; n=33) in the Intervention Group, being statistically different (p=0.004). Also in Lipp’s Stress Symptoms Inventory for Adults there was a significant stress reduction in 39% of the patients in the Intervention Group compared to a reduction of 14% in the patients of the Control Group (p=0.032). In this same measurement resulted that only 3% of the Intervention Group patients versus 23% of the Control Group patients (p=0.027) were in the exhaustion stage. Conclusion: Interactive music therapy was effective for stress reduction in women during assisted reproduction techniques.