Comentary on: Effects of music therapy on chemotherapy-induced anxiety.

Complete Title: A randomised controlled trial of the effect of music therapy and verbal relaxation on chemotherapy-induced anxiety.

Weblink: http://search.proquest.com.remote.libproxy.wlu.ca/docview/904018482/13524D3534F38AC99AC/10?accountid=15090

Journal: Journal of Clinical Nursing (2011), 20 (19), 2980.

Authors: Berger, Vance W.

Complete Abstract:

Lin et al. concluded that ‘both music and verbal relaxation therapy are effective in reducing chemotherapy-induced anxiety’. This is plausible, and it might hopefully even be true, but it certainly is not supported by this study. How ironic that the authors decided to use permuted blocks specifically ‘to maintain good balance’, when this method has been amply discredited in the literature, precisely because it does not maintain good balance across treatment groups when the trial is either unmasked or imperfectly masked. The imbalance in cancer stage across the treatment groups is a concern whether it is a random imbalance or caused by selection bias stemming from the use of prediction from the permuted blocks, but because permuted blocks were used, we must concern ourselves also with the possibility of other baseline imbalances in hidden yet important variables.

KEYWORDS: chemotherapy, anxiety, music therapy, verbal relaxation, physiology