Listening to guided meditation or relaxing music during an imaging-guided core-needle breast biopsy (CNBB) can reduce patient anxiety without interfering with radiologist-patient communication, according to a new study published by the Journal of the American College of Radiology.

Mary Scott Soo, MD, Duke University Medical Center department of radiology, and colleagues wrote about the numerous benefits of reducing patient anxiety during these procedures.

“Higher patient anxiety is associated with greater CNBB pain; therefore, interventions to reduce anxiety during CNBB may decrease pain as well,” the authors wrote. “Effective pain and anxiety management not only improve patient comfort, but also are vital to CNBB success. Pain and anxiety can result in patient movement, which lowers the diagnostic yield of procedures, particularly during stereotactic biopsies. In addition, pain may influence adherence to future mammography screening recommendations and potentially affect practice revenues.”

For their study, Soo et al. separated 121 patients scheduled to have a CNBB into three groups: one that listened to guided meditation with headphones during the procedure, one that listened to music, and another group that had a standard experience, receiving “supportive dialogue.” Immediately before and after the biopsy, patients were asked a series of questions about their anxiety, pain, and fatigue.

Overall, the team found that patients who listened to meditation and music reported much less anxiety and fatigue after their biopsy than the patients in the control group. In addition, the patients who listened to meditation reported significantly less pain during the biopsy than the music group and control group.

“These interventions seem to be safe, inexpensive, and easy to incorporate into clinical practice; further study is warranted to determine whether incorporating them into clinical practice affects adherence to subsequent treatments and recommendations,” the authors wrote.

Soo and colleagues also noted that, according to the patients’ surveys, these interventions did not compromise communication between the radiologist and the patient.

“Maintaining effective radiologist-patient communication is important, during not only diagnostic mammography but also CNBB, as better communication with radiologists who are recommending and performing biopsies is associated with lower pre- and postbiopsy anxiety, respectively,” the authors wrote. “Perceived radiologist-patient communication did not differ across groups, suggesting that [loving-kindness meditation] and music did not interfere with radiologists’ instructions or explanations during biopsy.”

The authors added that their study did have some limitations. The number of patients involved in the study—121—was “somewhat small,” possibly leading to unintentional bias. Also, the length of each procedure was not recorded, so it’s possible some patients had longer-than-normal procedure times, and this could have directly led to more fatigue.

The authors also pointed out that if patients had been able to choose between meditation and music instead of groups being selected at random, it may have been more beneficial. Patients who already know they are relaxed by music, for example, would have been able to specifically choose that option.