Music Therapy and Cancer Patients: Cochrane Review Update:

Congratulations to Dr. Joke Bradt (Drexel University) and her colleagues Dr. Cheryl Dileo (Temple University), Dr. Lucanne Magill (New York University) and Aaron Teague (Drexel University) for having the update of their Cochrane review ‘Music Interventions for improving psychological and physical outcomes in cancer patients’ highlighted as a feature review on the main website of the Cochrane Collaboration (www.cochrane.org), bringing significant exposure to the field of music therapy. The updated review  includes 52 studies (23 music therapy and 29 music medicine trials) with a total of 3731 participants. The findings suggest that music interventions may have beneficial effects on anxiety, pain, fatigue, depression and QoL in people with cancer. A comparison of music therapy with music medicine trials showed that music therapy trials led to more consistent findings across studies than music medicine studies.  In addition, music therapy interventions had a moderate effect on quality of life whereas no evidence of an effect was found for music medicine interventions. Based on the findings of this review, a recommendation for considering the inclusion of music therapy and music medicine interventions in psychosocial cancer care was made.

Link to podcast:http://www.cochrane.org/podcasts/10.1002/14651858.CD006911.pub3

Link to review:http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006911.pub3/abstract

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