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Decreasing Delirium Through Music (DDM)

Indiana University logo

Indiana University

Status

Completed

Conditions

Delirium

Treatments

Other: Music Therapy - Personalized Playlist
Other: Attention Control
Other: Music Therapy - Standard Playlist

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

Identifiers

NCT03095443
1608887741

Details and patient eligibility

About

DDM is a study designed to Test the efficacy of personalized music therapy in reducing delirium incidence and severity among patients admitted to the Intensive Care Unit.

Full description

Over 1 million adults are admitted to the intensive care unit and placed on mechanical ventilation on an annual basis. Intravenous sedatives and analgesics are commonly administered to these patients to reduce pain and anxiety. While the recent reduction in benzodiazepine usage has helped reduced ICU-related acute brain dysfunction (delirium), up to 80% of ventilated patients still develop acute brain failure. This is characterized by disturbance of consciousness with reduced ability to focus, sustain or shift attention, occurring over a short period of time and fluctuating over the course of a day.

Acute brain dysfunction has both short-term and long-term health impacts. It is associated with increased hospital length of stay, increased in-hospital mortality and post-discharge mortality as well increased health-care costs. Patients who experience delirium are at greater risk for post-discharge institutionalization and newly acquired cognitive impairment similar to dementia.

Despite the prevalence and morbidity associated with delirium, there is a scarcity of effective pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions to prevent and treat this condition. While music therapy has shown to reduce anxiety and stress in cancer and dementia patients, these studies were performed outside the intensive care unit. It is hypothesized that music lowers inflammatory mediators such as cytokines and cortisol. Delirium pathophysiology similar to anxiety has a strong inflammatory component with excess of pro-inflammatory cytokines such as interleukins 1, 6, and 8. Given the beneficial effects of music in reducing inflammatory mediators, it stands to reason that such intervention will have a beneficial impact on reducing delirium.

The investigators propose a randomized, three-group (personalized music intervention versus generic music intervention versus attention control) trial to test the feasibility and efficacy of music therapy in reducing delirium incidence, duration, and severity among critically ill patients in the ICU.

Our study focuses on the effect of music therapy on the incidence and severity of delirium in the intensive care unit at a large urban academic health center.

The investigators hypothesize that music therapy will lead to reduced levels of anxiety, delirium and need for sedating medications, leading to shorter hospital stays.

Enrollment

56 patients

Sex

All

Ages

18+ years old

Volunteers

No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

  • age 18 years or older
  • English speaking
  • admitted to the intensive care unit (medical or surgical)
  • receiving mechanical ventilation

Exclusion criteria

  • history of dementia
  • psychiatric illness which is not well controlled
  • alcohol withdrawal symptoms/concern for withdrawal
  • suspected or confirmed drug intoxication/overdose
  • traumatic brain injury
  • hearing or vision impairment including legal blindness
  • aphasic stroke
  • coma after cardiac arrest/hypothermia protocol
  • pregnant or nursing
  • prisoners
  • patients enrolled in another clinical trial.

Trial design

Primary purpose

Prevention

Allocation

Randomized

Interventional model

Parallel Assignment

Masking

Double Blind

56 participants in 3 patient groups

Personalized Music
Experimental group
Description:
Receives personalized playlist twice a day.
Treatment:
Other: Music Therapy - Personalized Playlist
Non Personalized Music
Active Comparator group
Description:
Receives standardized low beats per minute playlist twice a day.
Treatment:
Other: Music Therapy - Standard Playlist
Attention Control
Active Comparator group
Description:
Receives audio-book twice a day.
Treatment:
Other: Attention Control

Trial contacts and locations

1

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Data sourced from clinicaltrials.gov

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