It won’t be long before a hospital near you may feature some of the accoutrements of a luxury spa, all to make you recover faster.

In clinical trials and as routine service offered to patients who request it, select hospitals in the US are now supplementing traditional medicine with massage, hypnosis, or acupuncture in attempts to make people feel better, sooner, with less pain medication.

Can music heal a broken heart? That’s precisely the question inside the mind of heart patient Evelyn Whitmer and researchers of a music and guided imagery study at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City. The 78-year-old Utahan will undergo a conventional coronary bypass with a musical twist.

The night before their surgery, trial participants listen to music or narrated meditation involving positive scenes. These feel-good methods are intended as a form of distraction to take patients’ minds off their imminent operation and the pain that’s involved. “I could see these people in a beautiful forest running around like fairies,” says Whitmer, who was assigned to listen to music. “I was having a good time letting my imagination run with the music.”

Prior to her scheduled surgery, Whitmer has appreciated music that has livened up the sterile environment of some of her doctors’ waiting rooms. “When they’ve had beautiful music, it’s been a big help. It sounded like it would put you in a dream world.”

In the music therapy study, patients don headphones during surgery while an anesthesiologist monitors vital signs and regulates pain medication. In some cases, the music can relax patients so much that less medication is required. Fewer drugs can mean fewer side effects. Pain specialists hope the combined body-mind approach could translate into faster recovery times, reducing emotional and medical costs.

Acupuncture, being studied at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in LA, and hypnosis, studied at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, are some of the other holistic modalities that have been explored for healing and pain relief, inside and outside the surgical theater.

“Alternative” medicine might be a misnomer as once-unconventional therapies become more mainstream. A program at Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Illinois, exposes doctors to a broad range of treatments, including acupuncture, homeopathy, herbal remedies and mind/body integration. Similar programs are likely to proliferate as interest in such therapies among medical professionals and their patients continues to increase.

Some of these therapies are not indicated for every patient. Many doctors, including neurologist Dr. Walter Royal, MD, of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, who studies Multiple Sclerosis patients, are doubtful about the safety of alternative therapies like chiropractic, cranial massage, and hypnosis. When used by MS sufferers to relieve fatigue and other symptoms, says Royal, “These therapies…can be extremely dangerous.” In Royal’s opinion these practices–as well as some herbal supplements–can create more problems than they solve for MS patients. “We don’t recommend them,” he says.

Music therapy researchers won’t have results on how–or even if–music affects surgical patients until early 2001. Previous studies show abdominal surgery patients are discharged earlier and are much happier with their hospital stay when music therapy is included, with similar results seen among eye surgery patients.

Pain Services director Dr. Steven Rhondeau, MD at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City says that, in an industry that’s been heavily promoting advances in high tech equipment, the new approaches return the focus of health care back to the patient. “We’ve done a lot with the technology and science, now we need to look back a little bit and think about what we’ve lost in terms of patient’s needs,” says Rhondeau. “There is another element, another dynamic to their surgery, and that’s addressing their anxiety. In and of itself, it probably has a positive benefit.”

Bring on the pain relief in any form, says Evelyn Whitmer: “I’m the kind that wants to get out of all the pain I can.”

Researchers will also measure how music helps patients in recovery, with music therapy continuing for up to 4 days after surgery.