Breast Cancer in a Multi-Ethnic Asian Setting



Breast Cancer in a Multi-Ethnic Asian Setting

Aim of the research

This paper is a report of a clinical trial of the effects of music therapy on anxiety of female breast cancer patients following radical mastectomy.

Research design

A randomized, controlled clinical trial was conducted, with a between-group comparison of female breast cancer patients - the intervention group receiving music therapy in addition to routine nursing care and the control group receiving only routine nursing care.

Sampling

One hundred and twenty female breast cancer patients were recruited to the study. The randomization procedure was performed with 120 random numbers produced by a computer program (Ni & Dai 2002) and all patients were randomly allocated to two groups: an experimental group (n = 60) and a control group (n = 60).

Inclusion criteria:female aged between 25 and 65 with a pathological diagnosisof breast cancer requiring radical mastectomy. Patients were excluded if they were allergic to sound or had the voice sensitivity of epilepsy, or did not prefer music listening

The sample size was calculated based on the parameters of state anxiety (measured by SAI) in other related studies on cancer patients among which the largest sample size was selected (Bruscia et al. 2009).

Patients in the experimental group will have a reduction score of state anxiety in comparison with patients in the control group after music therapy; (2) The treatment effect changes with follow-up time, i.e. there is an interaction effect between treatment group and follow-up time

Data collection

Chemotherapy, Period of chemotherapy, First occurrence of breast cancer

Data were collected by using a standardized demographical data questionnaire and the State Anxiety Inventory

Data were collected by the researchers from March to November 2009.

Reliability is defined as the extent to which other researchers would arrive at the same conclusions if the same case is studied using the exact same procedures as the first research study. The Cronbach's Alpha reliability coefficient of SAI is 0Æ90 in this clinical trial.

The term bias is a historically unfriendly pejorative frequently directed at action research. As much as possible, the absence of bias constitutes conditions in which reliability and validity can increase. The validity coefficient is 0Æ88

Results

Patients in the experimental group were given an introduction of the music name and type of music stored in the music media library which had been copied onto the MP3 players. Music therapy was delivered by the researchers. Patients selected their preferred music, controlled the music volume and listened through a headphone connected to the MP3 player. The total experimental time involving hospital stay following radical mastectomy was 13Æ6 (2Æ0) days and the two chemotherapy periods were 18Æ9. Patients in the control group took part in the pre- and the three post-tests. They were not offered any information of music therapy during the study period in case of bias and only received routine nursing care which included the perioperative nursing care of breast cancer and chemotherapy nursing care.

A total of 120 participants were recruited and underwent the pretest with ...