A recent study from The Louis Armstrong Center of Music and Medicine at Mount Sinai Beth Israel (MSBI) suggests that music therapy may help increase the effectiveness of pulmonary rehabilitation for COPD patients.
According to a media release from The Mount Sinai Hospital/Mount Sinai School of Medicine, patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) who received music therapy along with standard rehabilitation saw an improvement in their symptoms along with their psychological well-being and quality of life compared to COPD patients who received rehabilitation alone.
The study, published recently in Respiratory Medicine, included 68 participants with COPD. Over the course of 6 weeks, a randomized group of those patients attended weekly music therapy sessions. These sessions included live music, visualizations, wind instrument playing, and singing, which incorporated breath control techniques. Certified music therapists provided active music-psychotherapy, the release explains.
“The care of chronic illness is purposefully shifting away from strict traditional assessments that once focused primarily on diagnosis, morbidity, and mortality rates,” says Joanne Loewy, DA, director of the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine at MSBI, in the release.
“Instead, the care of the chronically ill is moving toward methods that aim to preserve and enhance quality of life of our patients and activities of daily living through identification of their culture, motivation, caregiver/home trends, and perceptions of daily wellness routines,” she adds.
“Music therapy has emerged as an essential component to an integrated approach in the management of chronic respiratory disease,” states Jonathan Raskin, MD, co-author of the study and director of the Alice Lawrence Center for Health and Rehabilitation at MSBI.
“The results of this study provide a comprehensive foundation for the establishment of music therapy intervention as part of pulmonary rehabilitation care,” he continues.
[Source(s): The Mount Sinai Hospital/Mount Sinai School of Medicine, EurekAlert]
