The short version
- In a 192-patient trial, women who wore noise-cancelling headphones during gynecologic surgery had less nausea and vomiting afterward.
- The operating room averaged about 66 dB, roughly the level between conversation and a nearby vacuum cleaner.
- The result was presented at a conference and has not yet been published as a peer-reviewed paper.
Anesthesiologists at the First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University in Suzhou, China, randomly assigned 192 adults aged 18 to 65 having minimally invasive gynecologic surgery to one of two groups. Half wore ordinary over-the-head noise-cancelling headphones from the start of anesthesia until the operation ended. Half wore none. Everyone got the same anesthesia and the same anti-nausea medication. Within 48 hours, 35.4% of the headphone group had nausea or vomiting, against 52.1% of the others, about 17 fewer patients per 100. Those who were sick in the headphone group were also less severely sick in the first day.
The operating room averaged about 66 dB. “Patients under general anesthesia aren’t consciously aware of what’s happening around them,” the lead author, Huayue Liu, said in the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ release, but “that doesn’t mean the brain completely stops processing sound.” The trial was presented at the society’s ANESTHESIOLOGY 2026 meeting, October 16 to 20, and is not yet a peer-reviewed paper. The release gives no p-values and does not say how patients were randomized or whether anyone was blinded. Only one hospital is named, the trial covered one kind of surgery, and every patient was a woman. Liu says the next studies should measure how much noise each patient actually receives.
The release describes the headphones only as noise-cancelling and mentions no music, which makes this a test of quiet and a cousin of the music studies in our guide to music for medical procedures. There were no extra side effects in the headphone group.
