Interactive Music Therapy on Stress Level Reduction in Women Submitted to IVF/ICSI. Prospective Randomized Study

OBJECTIVE: To identify the effects of interactive music therapy on stress levels in women undergoing high complexity infertility treatments. METHODS: Prospective randomized study involving 113 women treated in the Reproduction Human Laboratory of the Clinics Hospital of the Federal University of Goiás State, submitted to in vitro fertilization/intracytoplasmic sperm injection. We used Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale, and Lipp’s Stress Symptoms Inventory for Adults. In the Intervention Group, we used small and easy to play percussive musical instruments, a guitar, voice, and a recorder. We used interactive music therapy approach individually, applied before baseline ultrasound scan, oocyte pick-up, and embryo transfer. We analyzed the data using the R. Paired Student t-test to compare the results. RESULTS: Comparison of the stress levels by Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale between the groups in the final moment of data retrieval resulted in 23.13 (SD±10.51; n=32) in the Control Group and 16.12 (SD±7.87; n=33) in the Intervention Group, being statistically different (p=0.004). Also in Lipp’s Stress Symptoms Inventory for Adults there was a significant stress reduction in 39% of the patients in the Intervention Group compared to a reduction of 14% in the patients of the Control Group (p=0.032). In this same measurement resulted that only 3% of the Intervention Group patients versus 23% of the Control Group patients (p=0.027) were in the exhaustion stage. CONCLUSION: Interactive music therapy was effective for stress reduction in women during assisted reproduction techniques.