Effects of Music Intervention on Anxiety, Depression Symptoms and Quality of Life in Breast Cancer Patients: A Meta-Analysis

ABSTRACT

Background: Music therapy is often used to relieveanxiety and depression in breast cancer patients, but theclinical effect of music therapy on breast cancer patientsis still controversial. This study was a systematic review toinvestigate the effects of music intervention on anxiety, de-pression, pain, and quality of life in breast cancer patients. Method: A computer search of PubMed, Embase,Web of Science, and The Cochrane Library repositories wasconducted. We searched for randomized controlled trials(RCTs), published in English until October 2023, on the ef-fects of music interventions on anxiety, depressive symp-toms, pain levels, and quality of life in breast cancer pa-tients. The Cochrane Manual of Systematic Review 5.3was used to evaluate the quality of the included references,and Stata15.0 software was selected for meta-analysis of thestudy indicators. Results: A total of 10 articles were included inthis study, including 593 patients. Meta-analysis showedthat music intervention could effectively alleviate anxietysymptoms [standardized mean difference (SMD) = –2.12,95% confidence interval (CI) –3.17~–1.07], depressionsymptoms (SMD –0.77, 95% CI –1.47~–0.07), and paindegree (SMD –3.47, 95% CI –6.45~–0.48). There was nosignificant difference in the improvement of patients’ qual-ity of life (SMD –0.07, 95% CI –0.48~0.34). Conclusion: Music intervention can effectively re-lieve anxiety and depression symptoms in patients withbreast cancer, and reduce the degree of pain, but demonstra-tion of its ability to improve the quality of life of patientsrequires additional research.(AU)