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Dental Fear, Anxiety, and Phobia
Published in Eli Ilana, Oral Psychophysiology, 2020
It is clear that in the dental situation fear and anxiety are practically indistinguishable. The patient is confronted with both “real” and “imagined” threats (see Chapter 2) and reacts with different degrees of apprehension. Usually, the term “dental fear” is used to describe moderate apprehension which causes tension before and during treatment, but enables the patient to receive dental care. Dental anxiety describes a more profound apprehension which actually interferes with routine treatment and requires special attention. The term “dental phobia” is typically used to refer to patients whose anxiety is so great that it leads to total avoidance of dental care, including practical oral neglect. In the present text the terms “dental fear” and “dental anxiety” will be used interchangeably.
Dental clinicians recognizing signs of dental anxiety: a grounded theory study
Published in Acta Odontologica Scandinavica, 2023
Markus Höglund, Inger Wårdh, Shervin Shahnavaz, Carina Berterö
Dental anxiety is associated with psychological, social and economic suffering for the patient [1–3]. It is also associated with avoidance of dental care, or irregular dental attendance, usually motivated by acute pain [4]. The tendency among dentally anxious patients to avoid regular and necessary dental treatment and check-ups leads to poor oral health because they have more untreated decay and fewer restored/filled teeth [4,5]. When dentally anxious patients seek dental treatment, they experience more pain than other patients due to their dental anxiety [6]. Among anxieties, fears, and phobias, those related to dental care are some of the most commonly reported [7]. One in five people in Sweden suffer from some degree of dental anxiety [8], and as many as one in 30 going for an annual check‐up is highly dentally anxious [9]. The level of dental anxiety ranges on a continuous scale from none to extreme, and the most severe form of dental anxiety can be diagnosed as a specific phobia [10]. The terms ‘dental anxiety’ and ‘dental fear’ are often used interchangeably. According to the Glossary of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition [10], anxiety is ‘the apprehensive anticipation of future danger’ and fear is ‘an emotional response to perceived imminent threat’. The MeSH term ‘dental anxiety’ is used more frequently in modern literature and will be used in this paper to describe both anxiety and fear related to dental care.
Robotic approach to the reduction of dental anxiety in children
Published in Acta Odontologica Scandinavica, 2020
Yelda Kasimoglu, Simin Kocaaydin, Emine Karsli, Merve Esen, Irmak Bektas, Gökhan Ince, Elif Bahar Tuna
Paediatric dentists have used many approaches to manage dental anxiety, such as traditional behaviour management techniques like tell-show-do, voice control, positive reinforcement, and distraction [4]. Distraction techniques are non-invasive approaches that diverts children’s attention from a painful stimuli and allow successful, high-quality treatment [5]. It is also easy to apply, safe and simple [6]. Visual and auditory distractions have been used in computer games, television and 3 D video glasses [7,8]. Audiovisual distraction seems to be an effective method reducing dental fear and anxiety in children compared to basic behaviour management techniques without audiovisual distraction [5,9,10]. However, Brignardello-Petersen [11] has shown that the use of audiovisual distraction does not improve behaviour or pain during dental treatment. Attar and Baghdadi [8] also showed that active distraction using an iPad demonstrated better performance than using audiovisual glasses. Therefore, there is a need to improve a new psychological approach in order to manage dental anxiety in children.
Dental anxiety in 18-year-old Norwegians in 1996 and 2016
Published in Acta Odontologica Scandinavica, 2020
Kjetil Strøm, Anne B. Skaare, Tiril Willumsen
The development of dental anxiety has a number of known risk factors [4,18]. As dental anxiety is a multifaceted condition; there are many different indications on how some develop this anxiety while others do not [6]. Among the most reported possible aetiological risk factors are whether the child had been fearful [19], the temperament of the child [20], the child’s family dental fear and anxiety [6,18,21] and if the child has low confidence in their dentist [22]. The most significant finding in some earlier studies is the experience of pain at earlier dental treatment [18,23]. Skaret et al. [12] demonstrated that having experienced pain in a dental situation at an early age increased the risk of dental fear and anxiety by tenfold. In a recent study, dentists reported that treating small children was very stressful and that several of them performed dental treatments without the use of local anaesthesia [24], even though proper pain control can be managed with the use of anaesthetics [25]. The belief that young patients do not feel the same pain as adults has been refuted [26], and without proper analgesia some patients will be at risk of reporting dental anxiety later in their life [12].