Music Therapy in the ICU as a Tool to Reduce Neuroactive Drugs: Generalized Versus Personalized Intervention

Admission to an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is one of the major causes of stress and both physical and emotional difficulties for critically ill patients, both because of the illness that caused the admission and of the ICU nevironment itself. Despite the use of protocols and tools to evaluate sedation, many patients continue to have high levels of anxiety. An inadequate treatment of this condition is associated with increased sympathetic activity which causes dyspnea and an increase in myocardial oxygen consumption. Sedative drugs, on the other side, may have significant side effects.

In view of this, there is clear need to find new strategies and instruments allowing for the maximization of critical patients' comfort, by promoting pain, anxiety, stress and agitation relief and minimising the need of sedative therapy.

The main hypothesis of this study is that the use of music therapy for critically ill patients can lead to a significant increase of the days free from neuroactive therapy (analgesics, sedatives, antianxiety meds, antipsychotics) in the first 28 days following Intensive Care Unit admission. To this purpose, data obtained from 3 groups of patients will be compared - a group with individual treatment administered by a music therapist and delivered by headphones, a group with a generalised treatment, through the creation of a weekly musical program continuously broadcasted in the hospital room, and a control group.