NCT05893121

Evaluation of a Cardiac Coherence Session to Reducing Patients' Anxiety During a MRI Examination

Evaluating the Contribution of a Cardiac Coherence Session to Reducing Patients' Anxiety During a Medical Magnetic Resonance Imaging Examination

• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: —
• Study type: Observational
• Enrollment: 60 (estimated)
• Sponsor: University Hospital, Toulouse · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

The present project aims at conducting a proof of concept study to explore the pertinence of a single session of cardiac coherence, carried out in patients prior to an MRI examination and presenting anxiety in relation to this examination, to reduce their level of anxiety and thus improve the course of the examination.

Detailed description

Although Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is considered to be biologically safe and painless, the examination is often perceived by patients as difficult to bear, causing a great deal of anxiety due to the various constraints: the upper half of the body, including the head, positioned in a tube with a circumference of approximately 70 cm, relatively long duration, immobilization and even restraint. However, all these conditions are necessary to obtain good quality images, which are essential for the interpretation of the examination for diagnostic purposes by the clinicians. The anxiety of patients linked to the performance of an MRI examination and its negative effects are documented in the literature. According to some authors, 71% of the professionals surveyed stated that anxiety was a common problem in their MRI centre and 19% stated that it regularly disrupted the examination. It is estimated that 10% of the motion artefacts present on MRI examinations are caused by anxiety-related motor agitation, making image quality difficult to exploit. Thus, every day, many MRI examinations are cancelled, interrupted, or of poor quality due to movement and difficult to interpret. All these examinations must therefore be rescheduled, with delays that can be several months long. Among these non-drug methods, cardiac coherence seems promising. This method is recent, non-invasive, of short duration, very easy to implement and requires little training for users. The present study hypothesize that a single session of cardiac coherence, carried out in patients prior to an MRI examination and presenting anxiety in relation to this examination, could make it possible to reduce their level of anxiety and thus improve the course of the examination.

Conditions

• Anxiety

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Cardiac coherence session	A cardiac coherence session consists of an exercise of six breaths per minute during five minutes.
OTHER	Information note about MRI	explanatory note about MRI examination

Timeline

• Start date: 2023-12-08
• Primary completion: 2026-03-30
• Completion: 2026-03-30
• First posted: 2023-06-07
• Last updated: 2025-12-22

Locations

1 site across 1 country: France