Patient-selected music listening and heartrate patterns during paediatric dental hygiene: an exploratory pilot study

AIM: To explore heart-rate changes across predefined procedural phases in paediatric patients undergoing professional dental hygiene with passive patient-selected music listening compared with standard care, and to descriptively examine HR patterns in a small clinically indicated nitrous oxide/oxygen (N2O/O2) conscious sedation reference group. BACKGROUND: Dental procedures may elicit fear and anxiety in children, potentially affecting cooperation and the overall quality of care. Music lis-tening is a simple, low-cost, non-pharmacological intervention that can be easily integrated into preventive dental procedures. However, physiological measures such as heart rate (HR) are non-specific and should not be inter-preted as direct measures of dental anxiety, fear, or behavioral cooperation. MATERIALS: This single-center pilot study included 45 children aged 5-14 years undergoing scaling and polishing. Participants were allocated to Group A (standard care; n=19), Group B (passive patient-selected music listening via headphones; n=21), and Group C (clinically indicated N2O/O2 conscious sedation; n=5; non-randomised reference group). Groups A and B were assigned by simple randomization, whereas Group C was not randomised. HR was recorded by fingertip pulse oximetry throughout the appointment and summarised at three predefined procedural phases: before the procedure (T0), during scaling (T1), and at the end of the session (T2). CONCLUSION: In this exploratory pilot sample, passive patient-selected music listening was associated with a different pattern of HR change across the dental hygiene session compared with standard care, with lower mean HR values observed during scaling and at the end of the session. Because HR is a non-specific physiological parameter and no validated psychological or behavioural measure of dental anxiety, fear, or cooperation was collected, these findings should be regarded as preliminary and hypothesis-generating and should not be interpreted as evidence of an anxiolytic effect. Larger controlled studies incorporating standardised procedures, subject-level analyses, and validated psycho-logical and behavioural outcomes are needed.