The Effects Of Traditional Chinese Medicine Five Elements Music On The Quality Of Life For Advanced Cancer Patients:a Randomized Controlled Trial

[Objective]To evaluate the effects of the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) five elements music on quality of life for senior and non-senior advanced cancer patients.[Methods]With a randomized controlled trial,170advanced cancer patients were randomly divided into three groups:the TCM five elements music group (68patients), the Western music therapy group (68cases), and the no music therapy group (34cases). Patients in the TCM five elements music group listened to TCM five elements music, the patients in the Western music group listened to Western music, and the patients in the no music group did not listen to music. A course of treatment was three weeks, with30minutes of treatment each day,5days a week. The Hospice Quality of Life Index-Revised (HQOLI-R), Karnofsky performance scores (KPS) and the symptom diary score were measured in the three groups before and after treatment respectively.[Results]After adjustment for age stratification factors, there were significant differences in HQOLI-R, KPS and the symptom diary score before and after treatment in the experiment group (P<0.05). There were significant differences in HQOLI-R, KPS and the symptom diary score after treatment comparing with the three groups (P<0.05). Additionally, there were significant differences in HQOLI-R and KPS after through pairwise comparison in three groups (P<0.05).[Conclusions]TCM five elements music therapy is effective in improving quality of life and subjective symptoms for advanced cancer patients.