The effectiveness of music in improving the recovery of cardiothoracic surgery: a systematic review with meta-analysis and trial sequential analysis

This study aimed to compile data on the effectiveness of music therapy for patients undergoing cardiothoracic surgery. After cardiac and thoracic surgery, patients often experience physiological and psychological complications, such as anxiety, pain, stress, depression and changes in vital signs, which have a great impact on prognosis. A systematic search of six databases was performed to identify randomized controlled trials investigating music therapy and cardiothoracic surgery. The data were extracted from the qualified research, the data without heterogeneity were analysed by random-effects model (REM) meta-analysis, and the data with heterogeneity were analysed by fixed-effects model (FEM) meta-analysis. We evaluated anxiety, pain, duration of mechanical ventilation, hospital length of stay, stress hormones, opioid consumption, and vital signs, including heart rate (HR), respiratory rate (RR), oxygen saturation (SpO2), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), and systolic blood pressure (SBP) after cardiothoracic surgery. The meta-analysis and sensitivity analysis were performed with RevMan 5.4 and Stata 14 software, and trial sequential analysis was conducted using TSA 0.9.5.10 Beta software. This study was conducted in accordance with the PRISMA guidelines and was registered with PROSPERO. The study included 24 randomized controlled trials with a total of 1576 patients. Our analysis showed that music therapy can significantly reduce the anxiety scores (SMD= -0.74, 95% CI [-0.96, -0.53], p