Decreasing Delirium Through Music

Over 1 million adults are admitted to the intensive care unit and placed on mechanical ventilation on an annual basis. Intravenous sedatives and analgesics are commonly administered to these patients to reduce pain and anxiety. While the recent reduction in benzodiazepine usage has helped reduced ICU-related acute brain dysfunction (delirium), up to 80% of ventilated patients still develop acute brain failure. This is characterized by disturbance of consciousness with reduced ability to focus, sustain or shift attention, occurring over a short period of time and fluctuating over the course of a day.

Acute brain dysfunction has both short-term and long-term health impacts. It is associated with increased hospital length of stay, increased in-hospital mortality and post-discharge mortality as well increased health-care costs. Patients who experience delirium are at greater risk for post-discharge institutionalization and newly acquired cognitive impairment similar to dementia.

Despite the prevalence and morbidity associated with delirium, there is a scarcity of effective pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions to prevent and treat this condition. While music therapy has shown to reduce anxiety and stress in cancer and dementia patients, these studies were performed outside the intensive care unit. It is hypothesized that music lowers inflammatory mediators such as cytokines and cortisol. Delirium pathophysiology similar to anxiety has a strong inflammatory component with excess of pro-inflammatory cytokines such as interleukins 1, 6, and 8. Given the beneficial effects of music in reducing inflammatory mediators, it stands to reason that such intervention will have a beneficial impact on reducing delirium.

The investigators propose a randomized, three-group (personalized music intervention versus generic music intervention versus attention control) trial to test the feasibility and efficacy of music therapy in reducing delirium incidence, duration, and severity among critically ill patients in the ICU.

Our study focuses on the effect of music therapy on the incidence and severity of delirium in the intensive care unit at a large urban academic health center.