Music, audio-visuals or virtual reality for dental anxiety?

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This review of the effectiveness of relaxing music, audio-visuals (AV), and virtual reality (VR) in reducing dental anxiety associated with tooth extraction included 11 RCTs. The findings suggest that music performed better than VR and AV . However the limited number of studies and variation in anxiety scales, musical and visual interventions used means that the findings should be interpreted cautiously.

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Local anaesthetic for dental treatment: interventions to improve acceptance in children

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Twenty six RCTs were included in this Cochrane systematic review of methods for the acceptance of local anaesthesia (LA) in children and adolescents during dental treatment. However the trials did not provide sufficient evidence to draw firm conclusions as to the best interventions

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Distraction techniques for managing dental anxiety in children and adolescents

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This review assessing whether distraction techniques reduce children’s/adolescent’s anxiety and fear during dental treatment included 20 RCTs providing very low certainty evidence that these techniques have a positive effect.

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Audiovisual distraction for dental anxiety in children?

Patients in the intervention group were shown a brief informational video before receiving their Internet based intervention, in the hope that this would encourage acceptance of the treatment. 

This review of the effectiveness of audiovisual distraction for reducing dental anxiety in children included 9 trials 6 of which were randomised. The findings suggested that audiovisual distraction was helpful in reducing dental anxiety although all the trials were considered to be at high risk of bias.

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