Going under the knife? Pack some Frank Sinatra cds…

If you’re going under the knife for a procedure soon, it might be a good idea to pack some Frank Sinatra CDs in your hospital bag. Why? Well apparently listening to the crooner can calm you down and help you to heal even faster.

The Daily Mail reports that surgeons have listed classical music and easy listening – such as old Blue Eyes – as their top musical choice when it comes to operating on patients who have to stay awake during their procedures.

The surgeons were taking part in a new study by the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford which sought to examine the impact of music on the human body.

Doctors working in the hospital’s department of plastic and reconstructive surgery analysed information obtained from 96 patients who took part in the experiment. The patients were split into two groups.

The first group was played classical and easy listening music as they underwent their procedures, meanwhile the other group was operated on without any music. Patients were awake for all of their operations.

Throughout the surgery, the anxiety levels of the patients were repeatedly measured using respiratory equipment and they were asked to rate how much anxiety they felt on a scale of 1 to 10.

The research, which was published in the Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons, revealed that the group who listened to music had lower levels of anxiety than the other group.

Dr Apul Parikh, one of the surgeons who was involved in the study, said that the background music helped patients to relax and also appeared to take their mind off the procedure that was taking place.

“They welcomed the distraction, even a minor operation can cause a great deal of stress. We didn’t want anything that would make a crazy noise, it was mostly classical, Beethoven and Vivaldi for example, and Sinatra for a mellow mood,” he said.

Previous studies have found that classical music generally has greater health benefits for patients as it allows them to completely relax and feel less anxious about their illness. It can also promote healing to occur as the body remains in a stress-free state while listening to it.

Playing music has also been known to help sufferers of Alzheimer’s Disease to relax and remember details of their lives that they have otherwise forgotten.

So the next time you’re in pain or feel a bit stressed, maybe it would be worth whacking on some Beethoven and seeing if there’s any truth in these claims.