Anxiety is a relevant problem in dental practice. The Visual Analogue Scale for Anxiety (VAS-A), introduced in dentistry in 1988, has not yet been validated in large series. The aim of this study is to check VAS-A effectiveness in more than 1000 patients submitted to implantology. The VAS-A and the Dental Anxiety Scale (DAS) were administered preoperatively to 1114 patients (459 males and 655 females, age 54.7 ± 13.1 years). Statistical analysis was conducted with Pearson correlation coefficient, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, and McNemar tests. A close correlation between DAS and VAS-A was found (r = 0.57, P < .0001); the VAS-A thresholds of dental anxiety and phobia were 5.1 and 7.0 cm, respectively. Despite a significant concordance of tests in 800 cases (72%), disagreement was found in the remaining 314 cases (28%), and low DAS was associated with high VAS-A (230 cases) or vice versa (84 cases). Our study confirms that VAS-A is a simple, sensitive, fast, and reliable tool in dental anxiety assessment. The rate of disagreement between VAS-A and DAS is probably due to different test sensitivities to different components of dental anxiety. VAS-A can be used effectively in the assessment of dental patients, using the values of 5.1 cm and 7.0 cm as cutoff values for anxiety and phobia, respectively.
To test the Italian translation of Corah's Dental Anxiety Scale (DAS) and to check the relationship between dental anxiety and the American Society of Anesthesiologists ( ASA ) physical status classification ( ASA-PS ), the DAS was translated into Italian and administered to 1072 Italian patients (620 male and 452 female patients, ages 14^85 years) undergoing oral surgery. Patients'conditions were checked and rated according to the ASA-PS. The DAS ranged from 4 to 20 (modus 5 8, median 5 10); 59.5% of patients had a DAS of 7^12, 26.1% had a DAS .12, and 10.3% had a DAS .15.The mean DAS was 10.29 (95% confidence limit 5 0.19); female patients were more anxious than male patients (P ,.001), while patients older than 60 years showed a significant decrease in the level of anxiety. Five hundred two patients were rated as ASA-PS class P1, 502 as ASA-PS class P2, and 68 as ASA-PS class P3, with a mean DAS score of 9.69,10.78, and11.09, respectively: the DAS difference between groups was significant (P ,.001).
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