Objective To evaluate the effectiveness of music therapy for dental anxiety disorders. Methods In order to gather clinical randomized controlled trials comparing the effectiveness of music interventions to traditional oral manipulation in patients with dental anxiety disorders, computer searches of the electronic databases of Wanfang, CNKI, VIP, PubMed, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, Cochrane library, Scopus, and CINAHL were conducted. The search period covered from 23 December 2022, through to the development of the database. The Cochrane Handbook was used to assess the quality of the included literature, and two researchers independently conducted the literature screening and data extraction. Stata 17.0 and RevMan 5.3 were used to conduct the meta-analysis. Results The preoperative baseline levels of the music intervention group were similar to those of the control group (p > 0.05), according to the meta-analysis, and music intervention significantly decreased heart rate (I2 = 81.2%, WMD (95% CI): -7.33 (-10.07, -4.58), p < 0.0001), systolic blood pressure fluctuations (I2 = 85.6%, WMD (95% CI): -6.10(-9.25, 2.95), p < 0.0001), diastolic blood pressure (I2 = 79.7%, WMD (95% CI): -4.29(-6.57, -2.02), p < 0.0001) fluctuations, anxiety scores (I2 = 19.6%, WMD (95% CI): -9.04(-11.45, 6.63), p < 0.0001), and pain scores (I2 = 32.7%, WMD (95% CI): -7.64(-9.43, -5.85), p < 0.0001), as well as significantly lowered anxiety and pain levels and raised patients' cooperation rates (I2 = 0%, OR (95% CI): 3.03(1.24, 7.40), p = 0.02). Conclusions Music interventions are effective for dental anxiety disorders, but given the limitations of the study, more multicenter, large-sample, high-quality randomized controlled trials are needed to further validate the findings and obtain more objective and reliable clinical evidence.
Keywords: dental anxiety disorder; meta-analysis; music.