Abstract
Introduction Many patients remain anxious during intravitreal injections, despite its increasing use. As music can alleviate anxiety for other procedures, we wanted to evaluate its effect during intravitreal injection. Methods Patients undergoing routine intravitreal injection were recruited for a randomized controlled trial. Subjects complete a State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-S) questionnaire before and after undergoing injection with or without background music. They were also assessed for subjective satisfaction, anxiety, pain, and future preferences after the injection. Results There were 39 and 37 Chinese subjects in the music (age 68.08 ± 13.67) and control (age 73.24 ± 11.17) groups, respectively. The music group reported lower anxiety and pain, and a greater reduction in STAI-S score, but the differences were not statistically significant (P = 0.830, 0.655, 0.199, respectively). More subjects in the music group (92.3%, control group 64.9%) preferred music for future injections (P = 0.003). Age, but not the number of previous injections, was negatively correlated with reported anxiety (r = −0.27, P = 0.021). Conclusion Most subjects preferred music during future injections. Although music reduced anxiety, the effect was not statistically significant and may be masked by the higher age of our control group, as increasing age was correlated with lower anxiety.
Highlights
Many patients remain anxious during intravitreal injections, despite its increasing use
To the best of our knowledge, no previous studies have been conducted on the effect of music on patients’ experience during intravitreal injections in Hong Kong. erefore, this study aims to evaluate the possible benefit of music in terms of the patient’s satisfaction, pain, and anxiety levels during intravitreal injections
A total of 78 subjects were initially recruited from January to March 2019, but 2 subjects in the music group were subsequently excluded as they had failed to hear any music in the operating room (OR). is leaves a total of 76 subjects for data analysis
Summary
Many patients remain anxious during intravitreal injections, despite its increasing use. Another study which examined both anxiety and pain in 225 subjects receiving intravitreal injections [2] reported that 25% had a Visual Analogue Scale for anxiety level of 6 or greater (out of a maximum of 10), which, in turn, was correlated with increased pain perception. It is likely that reducing anxiety may improve patient experience aside from its possible benefit on the perceived pain, as reported in a study of 300 subjects with wet age-related macular degeneration, where anxiety about the intravitreal injections was much more common than the actual perceived pain from the procedure [3]. With the increasing number of injections being performed and the recognition of significant anxiety during the procedure, there have been various studies investigating different methods to alleviate anxiety and improve patient experience. Use of music to reduce anxiety and pain has been previously reported for cataract
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