Using ambient audiovisual experiences to reduce the need for sedation in claustrophobic MRI patients

Abstract

Introduction

Claustrophobia is a major cause of discontinued magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) procedures and the use of sedation for MRIs incurs significant costs to both the hospital and the patient. This service evaluation assesses the effectiveness of an audiovisual ambient experience (AE) system in reducing the need for sedation for claustrophobic MRI patients in a hospital.

Methods

This is a service evaluation that was conducted in two phases:

1. A comparison was made of the claustrophobia-related MRI discontinuation rates among five outpatient scanners (one AE scanner and four non-AE scanners) over a two-year period, 2022 to 2023, to determine the impact of AE on MRI discontinuation rates in the hospital.

2. An observation was done on 30 claustrophobic patients in the hospital who had previously discontinued their MRIs in non-AE scanners and subsequently required sedation for their scans. They were provided with the AE scanner in attempt to save them the use of sedation and the success rate was recorded.

Results

1. The claustrophobia-related MRI discontinuation rate of the AE scanner was significantly lower than the combined discontinuation rate of the other four non-AE scanners (p < 0.001).

2. Out of 30 MRI sedation patients, 28 succeeded in completing their scans without sedation in the AE scanner, presenting a 93.3 % reduction in sedation use for this group.

Conclusion

An ambient audiovisual experience system showed effectiveness in reducing the use of sedation for claustrophobic MRI patients in the hospital.

Implications for practice

Future larger scale, multi-centre studies are needed to validate our experience, and to determine if this approach can benefit all MRI service providers in general.