Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative, progressive disease and the main symptom is the memory deficit. Currently, there is no drug able to treat the patients and prolonging their functional independence. In this scenario, music therapy is a non-pharmacological intervention adequate to the conservation of well-being. The present work aims through a systematic review, analysis of the effects obtained by the intervention of music therapy in patients with AD, mainly with regard to behavioral symptoms and cognitive loss. For this, we conducted an electronic bibliographic search in MEDLINE / PubMed, until
February 2020 using the terms: 'Alzheimer's disease' AND 'music therapy' AND 'human'. The inclusion criteria were: observational studies (cohort, case control) and randomized clinical trials; languages: Portuguese, English and Spanish.
The exclusion criteria were: studies which use another method in addition to music therapy; Participating articles included dementia other than AD and for the assessment of methodological quality of the articles, we used the Multiple Systematic Reviews Assessment tool. Altogether, the bibliographic research provided us with 160 articles, of which eight were fully adapted to the inclusion and quality criteria. Studies have shown beneficial effects of the use of music therapy as a non-pharmacological intervention in patients with AD, contributing to the reduction of patients' psychological and behavioral symptoms.
You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.