The Effect of Music Therapy in Reducing Dental Anxiety and Lowering Physiological Stressors.

BACKGROUND AND AIM: The anxiolytic effects of music have been studied during the past twenty years in different medical therapies. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of music therapy on patients' dental anxiety, salivary cortisol, heart rate, blood pressure and body temperature during dental treatment. METHODS: In this randomized control study, 46 patients were randomly selected from the Urgent Care dental clinic who needed urgent endodontic treatment (endodontic access and pulp extirpation). Participants were divided into two groups: intervention group (N=23) which was exposed to slow rhythm melody music and had no lyrics throughout the entire procedure and a control group (N=23) who undergoes the same dental procedure without being exposed to music. Participants' blood pressure, heart rate, body temperature and salivary cortisol were measured before and after the treatment for both groups. RESULTS: Patients in the intervention group showed lower salivary cortisol, blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature compared to those in the control group, however, the differences did not reach to statistical significance. CONCLUSION: -Despite the change in the dental anxiety and stress during treatment with music, the findings of this study could not establish evidence of the effect of music in reducing dental anxiety and lowering physiological stressors. Therefore, further studies with larger sample size may be needed. (www.actabiomedica.it).

Rapid Maxillary Expansion and Nocturnal Enuresis in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review of Controlled Clinical Trials.

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the effectiveness of rapid palatal expansion in the treatment of nocturnal enuresis among 6-18-year-old children and adolescents. METHODS: Comprehensive searches were carried out in 6 electronic databases (EBSCO, ProQuest, Clinical Key, Science Direct, SCOPUS, and OVID) and supplemented by additional manual searches in 4 orthodontic journals until June 2020. Randomized controlled clinical trials (RCTs) and controlled clinical trials (CCTs) of children and adolescents aged 6-18 years old of both genders who underwent rapid palatal expansion and were considered unresponsive to previous conventional nocturnal enuresis treatment were included in this review. Risk of bias of individual trials was assessed using the Risk of Bias in Non-randomized Studies of Interventions (ROBINS-I) assessment tool for CCTs and the revised Cochrane Risk-of-Bias tool for RCTs (RoB 2). RESULTS: Four studies met all inclusion criteria and were finally included in this systematic review, of which one was an RCT and three were CCTs. Reduction in nocturnal enuresis frequency was reported in all included studies with varying rates and methods of reporting, but most studies reported a statistically significant reduction in the number of wet nights per week. The average range of becoming completely dry 1 year after treatment with an RME was 0%-60%. Also, there was a statistically significant correlation between an improvement in bedwetting and an increase in nasal volume after the use of RME. CONCLUSION: A rapid palatal expansion device may be considered as an alternative treatment option of the nocturnal enuresis condition with guarded prognosis when other treatment modalities have failed.