The Role and Effect of Music Therapy in Combination Therapy for Cancer Management

Abstract

Cancer is one of the major diseases that harm human health. Tumor patients face a series of problems, including tumor disease symptoms, side effects of treatment, potential complications of illness, financial problems, and even the threat of death. The majority of patients are aware of these problems. It often manifests as fear, anxiety, anger, complaining, and depression. This leads to the generation of negative emotions, such as insanity and loneliness. These complications, such as feelings and isolation, seriously affect the quality of life of patients. Conventional treatments such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy cause some side effects and adverse reactions or difficulty in controlling some symptoms generated by the tumor itself. Therefore, some complementary and alternative medicines based on conventional cancer treatment have been added. In recent years, music nursing, as a non-traumatic and psychological therapy, has been applied to cancer patients, which plays a good role in improving their negative emotions and improving their quality of life. Moreover, this review summarizes the evolution of music therapy (MT), exploring the mechanism of MT and its clinical application in cancer management. In addition, some challenges and perspectives e.g., artificial intelligence applications for music therapy, are discussed. This work aims to encourage the broader application of MT for cancer patients to improve the survival experience of cancer patients, which is low cost, easy to implement, low risk, and efficient method.