Authors (including presenting author) :
Chan KH (1), Ng CW (1), Leung KH (1), Chui PF (1), So CT (1)
Affiliation :
(1) Occupational Therapy Department, Princess Margaret Hospital
Introduction :
In recent years, music-based intervention has been widely implemented in healthcare settings to treat cognitive, affective and behavioural problems. A single-group pilot study was conducted in Princess Margaret Hospital in Q1 2019 to investigate the general effect of music group in cognitively impaired patients and it showed significant improvement in mood. Acknowledging the mood enhancement effect shown in the previous study, this study refined the content of music group to further investigate the therapeutic effect in attention in addition to mood, with control group involved.
Objectives :
(1) To investigate the effect of music group on attention and mood in attention-impaired patients in Geriatric Day Hospital
Methodology :
A non-randomised controlled trial was conducted with convenience sampling. Subjects were (1) interested in musical activities (2) attention-impaired, who either scored below the 16th percentile in Hong Kong Montreal Cognitive Assessment (HK-MoCA) or Hong Kong Montreal Cognitive Assessment 5-min protocol, or did not get full score in the attention subdomain in HK-MoCA (3) without visual impairment, hearing impairment, dysphasia, unstable medical conditions or behavioral problems. Subjects either received 4 one-hour sessions of (1) music group or (2) conventional occupational therapy training as control. Content included (1) sustaining attention in musical tasks (2) reacting timely to specific stimuli (3) replicating rhythm and melody of songs. Outcome measures were categorized as (1) Trail Making Test A (TMT-A) and Digit Span Test (DST) for attention (2) Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS) for mood (3) The World Health Organization Five-item Well-being Index (WHO-5) for well-being.
Result & Outcome :
Data was collected from September 2019 to February 2020. Sample size in both groups were 20 respectively, in total 40. Between-group comparison indicated that subjects in the music group had significantly larger improvement in attention than those in the control group as shown in TMT-A (p=0.045), backward sequence (p=0.009) and backward span (p=0.013) in DST. Subjects in the music group also demonstrated significantly larger enhancement in mood and well-being as reflected in SHS (p< 0.001) and WHO-5 (p< 0.001) when compared to those in the control group. This suggests that music group may improve attention and mood of attention-impaired elderly.
