Your favorite music could help reduce the pain of small medical procedures

If you hate needles, music might make you feel better during a cannula insertion—but it has to be the right kind of music. Although different musical interventions have repeatedly been reported to help with pain and stress, the evidence varies widely for different types of music, and it's hard to figure out what works best. To investigate, scientists played different kinds of music for patients about to undergo an intravenous cannula insertion before an MRI—either Mozart, relaxation music or the patients' own favorite tunes.

They found that playing patients' favorite music worked best.