Treatment of delirium with MusiCure Pillow
Delirium is the term for a severe neuropsychiatric condition that occurs in the context of acute somatic disease, often in elderly and demented patients. The patients are resource demanding and usually treated with strong sedative medication and admitted longer requiring constant supervision.
At Hvidovre Hospital, they tested the MusiCure Pillow (pillow with built-in speakers and a special music program), on this patient group with surprisingly good results. The majority of patients came out of their delirium very quickly, needed less medication, and required less staff supervision. The pillow is now standard the equipment at the department.
Subsequently, North Zealand Hospital, Hilleröd, completed a similar project with delirium patients, with similar good results, now published in a thorough report by clinical nurse, cand. Cur. Camilla Engelstoft Hess: 'Music as a complementary treatment method for hospitalized patients with delir'.
The pillows were tested on 13 patients over a period of four months. The results from the registration forms showed that the majority of patients recovered faster when receiving the music intervention through the pillows:
• 7% of patients had no effect
• 23% of patients had some effect of the music but remained delirious.
• 69% of patients left delirium after 2-13 hours of music and needed less medication
The results with the pillow and delirium patients will be presented as posters at the forthcoming conference "Quality and Safety" at the Bella Center. After publishing the positive results with delirium patients, three other hospitals are now testing the pillow on the same patient group.