Five years of the Cemcat choir for PwMS: Outcomes on adherence and satisfaction

ABSTRACT

Objectives: To analyse the degree of adherence to the Cemcat choir, the reasons for interrupting participation and the degree of satisfaction of the participating patients. Methodology: Fifty-seven patients have participated in the faceto- face Cemcat choir from September 2015 until March 2020 (SARS-Cov-2 pre-pandemic period). The choir runs once a week for 90 minutes. It is led by a professional music therapist with a speech and language therapist, and a social worker is also involved. Analysis will include amount of long-lasting participants (with or without some intermittence), reasons why participants gave up the activity and patients' degree of satisfaction by year measured through a Visual Analogical Scale (VAS) being 0 the lowest and 10 the highest satisfaction. Results: Twenty-six patients (45,6%) have continued their participation, twenty-four patients uninterruptedly (92.3%) and two patients (7.6%) with some interruption.Thirty-one patients (54%) gave up the choir and the reasons for stopping the participation were difficulties to manage attendance (n=8, 26%), lack of interest (n=15, 48%), health-related reasons (n=4, 13%), exitus (n=1, 3%) and unknown or other reasons (n=3, 10%). The mean VAS of satisfaction for having sung in the choir is 9.2 and the mode is 10. Conclusions: Adherence to the Cemcat choir is high. A significant number of patients have maintained their participation for a long time. Fifteen patients of the whole sample (26.3%) gave up because of lack of interest. The degree of satisfaction of the participants is very high and it is consistent with the reported high adherence to this activity.