Effect of music on anxiety and pain during ultrasound-guided core needle breast biopsy: a randomized controlled trial

PURPOSEAlthough imaging-guided core needle breast biopsy is a minimally invasive diagnostic procedure, it is reported that patients may experience anxiety and pain. Interventions to reduce anxiety are important for high quality health services during imaging-guided core needle breast biopsy. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of music intervention on anxiety and pain levels of patients undergoing ultrasound-guided core needle breast biopsy.METHODSIn a prospective randomized controlled design, patients who were referred for ultrasound-guided core needle breast biopsy were invited to the study and randomized into the intervention group who received standard care with classical music intervention before and during the biopsy procedure, and the control group who received only standard care. Both groups received local anesthesia. The Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) were used for measuring anxiety and pain levels after the procedure. One-way multivariate analysis of variance test was used to find the effect of music intervention on patient anxiety and pain.RESULTSThere were 31 patients (48.4%) in the intervention group and 33 (51.6%) in the control group; the groups were similar in terms of sociodemographic characteristics and general (trait) anxiety levels. The patients in the music intervention group had significantly lower state anxiety score than the control group (p = 0.008) with a mean difference of 3.8 (95% CI, 1.0–6.6). The mean difference of VAS pain score was 6.0 (95% CI, 2.2–14.2), which not statistically significant between groups (p = 0.150). There was no significant correlation between the VAS and the state anxiety scale (r = 0.003, p = 0.980).CONCLUSIONMusic reduced anxiety, but not pain during ultrasound-guided core needle breast biopsy. These results have implications especially for low and middle-income countries where low-cost and easily implemented interventions are needed to address patient anxiety during breast biopsy procedures.

Imaging-guided core needle breast biopsy is a safe and cost-effective procedure that is essential for managing suspicious breast lesions (1, 2). Although imaging-guided core needle breast biopsy is a minimally invasive procedure, patients may experience anxiety and distress (3). Reducing anxiety during biopsy procedures is important as higher anxiety during different biopsy procedures was found to be associated with higher pain (4, 5), and reducing anxiety may reduce the pain and increase the patient comfort. Furthermore, the regulation of anxiety during breast biopsy plays an important role in adherence to follow-up (6).Music regulates emotions by affecting the expression of opiate, nitric oxide, cytokine, and hormone levels through neuroendocrinological pathways (7). Music has been shown to reduce anxiety and pain levels in different medical procedures like chemotherapy, chest tube removal, endoscopy, colonoscopy, magnetic resonance imaging, fine needle aspiration biopsy, transrectal ultrasound-guided prostate biopsy, bone marrow biopsy, surgery, labor and caesarian section (8–11). A systematic review recommended that music intervention should be applied to clinical management of biopsy patients (12). However, there is scarce research on the effect of music on ultrasound-guided core needle breast biopsy patients’ anxiety and pain levels (13–15). Two of these trials showed that music reduced the anxiety levels of breast biopsy patients (13, 15), whereas one study reported that music intervention was not effective (14). All of the mentioned studies are from high income countries and have inconsistent results. There is no study on the effect of music intervention on anxiety and pain levels of ultrasound-guided core needle breast biopsy patients from low- and middle-income countries where there may be cultural and socioeconomical differences that may affect the patients’ response to music interventions. Furthermore, these countries are in need of low-cost interventions to increase the quality of life of patients.This study investigated whether or not classical music changed patient anxiety and/or pain levels of patients undergoing ultrasound-guided core needle breast biopsy in Turkey. It was hypothesized that music intervention will decrease the patients’ anxiety and pain levels.