Music listening and dental anxiety in children aged 4–8 years: a quasi-experimental study

Background: Music listening may complement behavior guidance during pediatric dental care. Objective: To describe anxiety before and after treatment with and without music, and examine distributions by age and music genre. Methods: A nonrandomized controlled study included 64 children aged 4–8 years recruited by convenience in Trujillo, Peru, in 2025: 32 with music and 32 without music. Anxiety was assessed with the Facial Image Scale. Age and genre distributions were compared using two-sided Fisher–Freeman–Halton exact tests. Results: After treatment, the music group comprised 17 children with mild anxiety (53.1%) and 15 with mild-to-moderate anxiety (46.9%). The within-group before-and-after comparisons yielded p = 0.0015 with music and p = 0.862 without music. The exploratory comparison at age 5 yielded p = 0.0357. Mild anxiety occurred in 15 of 17 children receiving classical music (88.2%) and 6 of 15 receiving children’s music (40.0%); the genre comparison yielded p = 0.0098. Conclusions: Lower anxiety categories were observed after treatment with music. Classical music was associated with a more favorable anxiety distribution than children’s music. Nonrandomized allocation limits causal interpretation; age findings remain exploratory. Trial registration: Not reported in the study documentation.