Discussion
MM, anxiety, pain
DISEASE
This is the first randomized controlled clinical study that demonstrates the efficacy of a 20-min mindfulness meditation intervention in rapidly reducing the surgery anxiety of patients during dental implant operations. The findings suggest that the mindfulness meditation had significant positive effects on cardiovascular parameters, physiological findings and biochemical outcomes.Dental implant surgery under local anesthesia comprises a major part of oral surgery. Although local anesthesia usually provides adequate analgesia for surgery, patients usually suffer from the discomfort and pain associated with surgical proceduresMindfulness as a state, trait, and clinical intervention has been extensively researched over the last two decadesPrevious studies have demonstrated reductions in cortisol subsequent to mindfulness interventionsGrowing evidence has indicated that mindfulness practice induces both state and trait changes; that is, it temporarily changes the condition of the brain and the corresponding pattern of activity or connectivityTaniyama et al.We provided a brief mindfulness training for the MM group. According to Zeidan et al.TangThis study has some limitations. First, the study was conducted in a single center with a relatively small sample size. Second, anxiety and hemodynamic parameters are complex multicausal conditions; thus, there may well be more confounding factors that explain the variance in anxiety and hemodynamic parameters (such as age, gender and systemic health) than those found in this study. Although a large number of studies have used hemodynamic parameters in the physiological assessment of anxiety, it should be taken into account that there are also a few studies with contradictory results in this regard. Third, the local anesthesia during the procedure might affect hemodynamic parameters, which could have potential consequences for both physiological and psychological status.In addition to these limitations, the patients in the control group knew that they would not receive pre-operative meditation, which may potentially affect their anxiety levels. As the patients of the control group were immediately taken to surgery after T1 while the patients of the test group received MM after T1, this additional time period may introduce a confounder factor for the outcomes. Furthermore, MM was performed by another dentist other than the operator in the current study. It has been reported that the dentist-patient relationship is another important issue, which is the core of dentistry. A good therapeutic alliance during dental therapy, including adequate, individualized, and nonjudgmental education, is of the utmost importance in order to decrease the patient's negative emotions, allow the patient to gain insight about the disease condition, and increase their feeling of control over the situationAs compared with the non-meditated group, mindfulness meditation appeared to be a feasible and reliable strategy for managing stress during dental implant operations with benefits in psychological, physiological and biochemical outcomes. Overall, the results provide evidence that brief mindfulness meditation is effective for reducing dental anxiety. We believe that these findings will provide valuable evidence to guide future mindfulness-based intervention research in the dental field.