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Researchers have found evidence that acupuncture could help people who experience dental anxiety. Dental anxiety affects many people across the globe, patients can experience nausea, difficulty breathing and dizziness at the thought of going to the dentist, during an examination, and after treatment.
In a review of six trials with 800 patients, researchers used a points scale to measure anxiety and studies show that anxiety reduced by eight points when dental patients were given acupuncture as a treatment. This level of reduction is considered to be clinically relevant, which means that acupuncture could be a possibility for tackling dental anxiety.
Previous clinical trials have involved acupuncture for treatment on a range of conditions, including lower back pain, depression, and irritable bowel syndrome. Professor of Acupuncture, Hugh MacPherson, at the University of York’s Department of Health Sciences, said: “There is increasing scientific interest in the effectiveness of acupuncture either as a standalone treatment or as an accompanying treatment to more traditional medications.
Acupuncture treatment can boost the effectiveness of standard medical care in chronic pain and depression, chronic pain is often a symptom of a long-term condition, so to further our understanding of the various uses of acupuncture we wanted to see what it could achieve for conditions that occur suddenly, rapidly and as a reaction to particular experiences. Studies that compared anxiety levels between patients that received acupuncture and those that did not, showed a significant difference in anxiety scores during dental treatment.
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