The aim of this systematic review was to investigate the effect of treatment duration on children’s behavior and/or anxiety in the dental setting. To this end, a systematic search was conducted in Pubmed/Medline and Scopus from 1970 to march 2017 for English language articles that assessed the relationship between dental treatment duration or length, and fear/anxiety or behavior in children aged <12 with no confounding medical and/or psychological history and neuro-psychiatric disabilities. Four studies investigating the effect of treatment duration on children’s behavior during and/or after treatment were included. None of the reviewed studies investigated the effect of treatment duration on children’s dental anxiety or fear. There was a general tendency towards deterioration of children’s behavior with an increase in treatment duration. In conclusion, our results undermine the validity of current suggestions about the appropriate treatment duration. Further clinical trials are needed to establish appropriate treatment duration for more effective behavioral management of pediatric patients during dental proce-dures.

The major finding of this research suggested that a high EQ may be more effective than a low EQ in moderating the level of cooperation during dental treatment of children. IQ scores, on the other hand, were related to the child's EQ score (r = 0.20) and age (r = - 0.29).

Objectives: The present study aimed at evaluating the correlation between emotional intelligence subscales and child's anxiety and behavior in the dental setting. Study design: The study included 123 children aged 7-12 years, who were scheduled to attend two consecutive sessions. In the first session, the Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory: Youth Version (Bar-on EQ-I: YV) was administered to participants. The anxiety and behavior in children was evaluated during similar dental procedures in the second session using the Clinical Anxiety Rating Scale and the Frankl scale, respectively. Results: 23 children were eliminated from the study, leaving 100 participants (47 boys and 53 girls) with a mean age of 9.32 ± 1.59 years for study. There were statistically significant positive correlations between Frankl score and EQ total score (p&lt;0.001), interpersonal scale (p&lt;0.001), intrapersonal scale (p&lt;0.001), stress management (p=0.03) and adaptability scale (p&lt;0.001). Significant negative correlations were found between anxiety score and, EQ total score (p&lt;0.001), interpersonal scale (p&lt;0.001), intrapersonal scale (p&lt;0.001), and adaptability scale (p&lt;0.001). Anxiety and stress management were not correlated (p=0.16). Total EQ and EQ subscales can predict significance variance of Frankl score (p&lt;0.05) and anxiety score (p&lt;0.05) without confounding effect of age and sex (p&gt;0.05). Conclusions: The results provide evidence that children with higher total EQ as well as higher scores of intrapersonal, interpersonal, adaptability and stress management scales can generally be flexible and effective in coping in the dental setting. Higher score in stress management subscale seems to be related to better control over affective information including anxiety compared with other subscales in stressful situations. Overall, they behave and cooperate better than children with lower scores.