According to the latest research issued in the “Journal of Psychosomatic Research”, the use of audio-story and music distraction techniques was not significantly different to mitigate pain and anxiety during local anesthetic administration in pediatric patients undergoing dental procedures. Not just in adults, the control of pain and fear during dental procedures is a challenging situation in children too.

Maedeh Sadeghi et al. compared the impact of music and audio-story diversion on pain and anxiety in children during dental therapy. Sixty healthy children aged 4 to 8 years, who were due for pulpotomy procedure and steel crown on primary maxillary first or second molars were considered in this randomized crossover clinical study. The patients were randomly allocated to two groups: music-story or M first group and story-music or S first group.

Faces pain rating (FPR), pulse rate (PR), and sound-eye-motor (SEM) (physiological scales) were used to evaluate the pain levels and anxiety. The treatment, period, sequence and carryover effect were assessed via the pkcross package in Stata 14. Overall, each group included 28 children. The disparity in PR was not noteworthy at the start and end of each sitting between the two distractions used. The mean scores of FPR and SEM did not considerably vary in these groups.

The audio-story and music distraction techniques were not considerably different for anxiety and pain management during local anesthetic administration. Hence, considering the similar effectiveness of the two strategies, dental clinicians can utilize any of the two for distracting pediatrics.