Dr. Stefano Sinicropi, M.D.

It’s no surprise that music can evoke a physical and emotional reaction in people, but a study published in the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine found that music may help reduce back pain and anxiety levels in patients seeking care in the emergency department.

Study authors were interested in learning if music could positively impact patients seeking out emergency department care for back pain. Spinal discomfort accounts for more than 2.6 million emergency department visits each year, so there is a sizable portion of the population who could benefit from improved care protocols in the emergency department.

Music And Back Pain

For the study, researchers recruited 40 patients over the age of 18 who presented to their emergency department with acute back pain with an initial pain severity rating of 5 or more on a scale of 1 to 10. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups:

• A music group, who listened to an artist or genre of music of their choosing from a Spotify Premium account for 10 minutes, without skipping songs or changing the music selection.
• A silent group, who wore noise cancelling headphones for 10 minutes.

Participants completed these tasks and were again assessed for psychosocial factors and clinical pain scores. After looking at the data, researchers found that patients in the music group reported significantly lower pain severity scores compared to patients in the noise cancellation group, and a similar effect was seen when it came to decreases in anxiety levels. Researchers believed these factors played off one another, and that as music eased anxiety levels, patients were more likely to also see their perceived pain scores drop.

Researchers aren’t claiming that patients showing up to the emergency department with back pain need only to throw their Airpods in for pain relief, but they believe that patient-chosen music could be a low-cost and low-risk to manage some of the physical and mental effects of a back injury while pursuing other effective proactive interventions.

So if you’re headed to the doctor’s office for back pain treatment or you’re simply looking to get in a calmer head space because of back discomfort, consider queuing up your Spotify playlist and listening to some of your favorite songs. And for more assistance overcoming back pain, connect with Dr. Sinicropi and the team at Midwest Spine & Brain Institute today at (651) 430-3800.

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