USING GUIDED IMAGERY AS A DISTRACTION METHOD DURING DENTAL PROCEDURES

摘要

Dental procedures usually need pharmacological analgesia as a painkiller. Guided imagery has been introduced recently as a pain therapy based on distraction. This technique reduces pain and anxiety of dental patients without the side-effects of the pharmacological analgesics. These types of therapies have become popular in medical fields and proved their efficacy as an alternative painkiller, especially in dental procedures. Computer graphics and computer games as well as virtual reality have influenced the medical treatment with outstanding psychological impacts on patients. The advantages of imagery therapy have encouraged researchers to explore this field and consequently publish some astonishing results. In this paper, we provide a brief historical review of developments in imagery therapy related to dentistry and then we present our system, which is entirely devoted to cancer victims, then we show how we modified it to relief pain and relax children under dental procedure. This system is under development for dental patients.