Meditation before labor epidural placement showed no clear overall benefit
Pregnant participants heard guided meditation or a neutral recording before epidural placement. Overall anxiety, pain and satisfaction did not differ significantly; an exploratory result suggested possible benefit among participants with more negative pain-related thoughts.
Based on the published abstract. The full paper may contain additional methods, results and limitations.
The 30-second takeaway
The trial did not detect an overall difference in anxiety, pain or procedural satisfaction between meditation and neutral recordings. An exploratory analysis suggested greater benefit among participants with higher pain catastrophizing, meaning strongly negative thoughts about pain. That finding requires confirmation and does not establish that meditation works for this subgroup or for laboring patients generally.
The subgroup finding came from an exploratory analysis performed after the main analysis. The abstract omits overall effect estimates and confidence intervals, leaving the size and uncertainty of any overall effect unclear.
What researchers found
Anxiety, pain and procedural satisfaction
Meditation versus a neutral recording, with participant reports collected after labor epidural placement. This does not establish equivalence between the recordings.
The main comparison was neutral
Both groups received an audio recording through headphones before the procedure. The central question was whether guided meditation changed their subsequent ratings more than neutral content, rather than whether listening to any recording helped.
The subgroup result was exploratory
Researchers later examined whether baseline pain-related thinking modified the intervention's effect. This analysis generated a possible explanation for differing responses, but the authors called for further research to confirm it in a larger or selected sample.
The original publication
Mindful meditation for epidural catheter placement during labor: a single-center randomized controlled trial.
Lumbreras-Marquez MI, Lazaridou A, Villela-Franyutti D et al.
Pain Med · 2026
- PubMed ID
- 40570097
- Record checked
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