The characteristics of the acoustic environment and the restorative benefits of soundscape in interventional therapy rooms

Abstract

Coronary heart disease (CHD) has become one of the most serious health problems in the world. As a treatment environment for CHD, the acoustic environment in the interventional therapy room is crucial to patients and healthcare workers. To investigate the characteristics of the sound environment in interventional therapy rooms and the soundscape health benefits of the soundscape for patients, acoustic measurements and noise behavior observations were conducted in various areas of an interventional therapy room, and soundscape intervention experiments were performed on patients treated there. In this study, CHD patients were used as the research object. Results show that: 1) the background noise levels for waiting area (WA) and operation area (OA) under empty field conditions were 54.5 dBA and 52.8 dBA, and 66.43 dBA and 64.2 dBA, respectively, under conditions of usual use. 2) Patients perceived the acoustic environment as noisy and uncomfortable in both areas, with OA being more severe than WA. 3) Natural sounds from composite sources has a greater potential for restorative benefits than single-source soundscape.