Bach with your bronchoscopy? Or should it be Nat King Cole or maybe Elvis?

It turns out music can reduce anxiety for patients undergoing bronchoscopy, but only if it matches the patient’s musical taste, according to research.

Nurses Elisabeth Jeppesen, Carsten M. Pedersen and others published “Listening to Music Prior to Bronchoscopy Reduces Anxiety – A Randomized Controlled Trial” in European Clinical Respiratory Journal. They found that self-selected music had the greatest effect for the patients undergoing bronchoscopy for suspected lung cancer.

“Due to its low cost and safety, self-selected music pre-procedurally can reasonably be offered to patients undergoing bronchoscopy,” the authors write.

Although music as a means of reducing anxiety in endoscopy has been studied before, the results have been contradictory and inconclusive, the authors say. Since anxiety negatively affects patients’ tolerance of the procedure, finding ways to reduce that trepidation is always a goal of healthcare workers.

The authors studied 300 patients at Bispebjerg University Hospital in Copenhagen, Denmark, who were undergoing bronchoscopy for suspected lung cancer, and randomly assigned them either no music, specially-designed music, or allowed them to choose their own.

The categories for the self-selected music were easy listening, evergreen, jazz, classical, and pop/rock.

Music, in general, helped reduce anxiety. The reduction was greatest in patients who got to hear their own choice of music for 20 minutes prior to bronchoscopy.

The standardized anxiety test included measuring blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate and oxygen saturation level conducted upon arrival, after 10 minutes with or without music and at discharge.

Music’s power to ease anxiety has been studied in other areas of endoscopy. One study found that music helped ease anxiety and pain in flexible cystoscopy. That research was published in the Arab Journal of Urology.