At first glance, the photograph looks like a scene from a science-fiction film or one of those viral, digitally altered images. A woman lies calm on an operating table under bright white lights, a headset snug over her ears. But it’s real and was taken inside a hospital in New Delhi more than a year ago.
It’s a snapshot of an unusual clinical trial by a group of anaesthesiologists from Lok Nayak Hospital and Maulana Azad Medical College. They wanted to investigate if music flowing through headsets during a minor surgery could soften the blow of strong medicines.
“All our surgeries are in completely new environments for patients and we give them general anaesthesia to produce unconsciousness,” Sonia Wadhavan, director professor of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care at Maulana Azad Medical College, said. “But since all these groups of drugs come with some amount of side effects, we asked: if we integrate music therapy with our anaesthetic agents, can it help us reduce the requirement of these drugs?”
Dr. Wadhavan and her team designed a randomised controlled trial, which is a kind of experiment where people are split into groups by chance, like drawing names from a hat, to see if something truly works. One group listened to slow, soothing ragas for the entire surgery; the other did not.
The results were telling: people who heard the music needed about 15% less anaesthetic. Their heart rates stayed steady, their blood pressure held firm, and stress hormone levels fell. The study suggested that music helps patients heal with less strain and less medicine.
Soundtrack under the scalpel
The study, published in the October 2025 edition of the journal Music and Medicine, ran over 11 months. Fifty-six adults planning gallbladder removal, a common surgery to take out the small organ that holds digestive fluid used to break down fats, volunteered for this research.
The patients were split into two groups: one listened to soft flute and piano music during surgery; the other wore identical noise-cancellation headphones and were in silence.
The music the researchers chose wasn’t random. It featured two Hindustani ragas: the bright, uplifting tones of Raga Yaman and the calm, soothing notes of Raga Kirvani. They chose these ragas because they believed the tones could gently steer the body’s “fight or flight” system, which raises heart rate and blood pressure under stress, towards a calmer and steadier state.
“Since the ability to hear remains intact even under anaesthesia, we used music therapy to study its effect on the sympathetic system and stress modulators like cortisol,” Dr. Wadhavan said.
And it worked. Patients who listened to the music needed, on average, about 15% less propofol, a fast-acting anaesthetic that puts you under in seconds and keeps you pain-free and perfectly still. Not only that: their levels of cortisol, a hormone the body releases when it’s stressed, were lower. The participants also needed fewer painkillers and had steady blood pressure throughout the surgery.
“It was a eureka moment,” said Tanvi Goel, principal investigator and anaesthesiologist at Lok Nayak Hospital and Maulana Azad Medical College. “The music group not only required less anaesthesia but their stress levels were significantly lower.”
Even under anaesthesia, the brain doesn’t shut down. The auditory cortex still registers sound, catching rhythm and tone. As surgery begins — with its pokes, pricks, and cuts — the body’s stress systems stir. The levels of cortisol and other hormones rise, pushing up blood pressure and blood sugar to cope with the strain. The person feels nothing but the body still braces. Music seems to mellow this response, releasing endorphins and oxytocin to steady the heart, ease stress, and support healing.
“It’s non-pharmacological, low-cost, and safe,” said Farah Husain, co-investigator and a certified music therapist. “All it needs is a Bluetooth device and a pair of headphones. There’s no side-effect, only potential benefits.”
‘Complementary approaches’
Alex Street is a senior research fellow at the Cambridge Institute for Music Therapy Research in the UK. He studies how music stirs the brain, the nervous system, and emotions, and how it can be used in real therapy.
“What needs to happen is medicine always has to have a non-medical adjunct,” Dr. Street said. “Complementary approaches like music can reduce the need for medications that often have nasty side effects.”
For instance, fentanyl is a synthetic opioid often used to control severe pain during surgery. But just 2 mg of fentanyl can kill an adult human. It has become the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45, surpassing car accidents and gun violence. This is part of the opioid crisis, driven by the overuse of powerful painkillers. The epidemic shows why gentler ways to ease pain and stress are needed now more than ever.
In the Lok Nayak Hospital study, patients who listened to soothing music also needed less fentanyl during the surgery, signalling that non-drug approaches could help reduce reliance on powerful painkillers.
“There is still so much to discover about what happens in the depths of the subconscious,” said Dr. Husain. “And maybe the effects of music on the subconscious mind can actually provide a window to this new unexplored world of knowledge for us.”
Dr. Street added a practical reminder: that patients still need to hear the surgical team, even when the music plays.
“You can’t just block everything out with noise-cancelling headphones,” he said. “The patient needs to be able to hear what people are saying.”
The Delhi team now hopes to test their music experiment with more surgeries and larger groups. In a country where hospitals overflow and resources are stretched thin, every drop of drug and every minute saved can ease costs, speed recovery, and free beds. That image of a patient on an operating table with headsets on may soon feel less like science fiction and more like standard care.
Published – November 18, 2025 04:00 pm IST
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