Anxiety presented by children facing dental treatment

Abstract

Objective: To determine the profile of children from 6 to 12 years of age, in relation to anxiety towards dental treatment and evaluate the main factors that trigger anxiety in this population. Methods: The sample was composed of 200 children with an average age of 8.5 years who attended the Clinic of the School of Dentistry of the Federal University of Campina Grande and the Basic Healthcare Units of the municipality of Patos, Paraíba, Brazil between June 2015 and May 2016. Anxiety was assessed using the Dental Anxiety Scale and the Venham Picture Test. The Chi-Square test and Fisher’s exact test were used to explore the level of significance of the associations between the variables Results: Anxiety was observed in the majority of children (Dental Anxiety Scale - 89% and Venham Picture Test - 70.5%) and the predominant levels were low to moderate. The child´s age group was significantly associated with anxiety (p=0.014) by the Venham Picture Test, while gender did not present this correlation. Anxiety was influenced by all the factors studied: making the appointment, waiting room, rotary instrument and periodontal scaling. Conclusion: The majority of children presented anxiety and the trigger factors: making the appointment, waiting room, rotary instrument and periodontal scaling contributed considerably to its development.

Audio–visual storytelling for reducing dental anxiety in Iranian children: a randomized controlled trial

“…Many different assessment methods are available; however, the ideal measure should be valid, allow for limited cognitive and linguistic skills, and be easy to administer and score in a clinical context (Buchanan and Niven 2002 ). VPT is one of the few picture scales available that covers all these criteria (Morgan et al 2017 ) and has been used in several studies to measure children's anxiety (Pakdaman and Davodi 2015 ; Khokhar et al 2017 ; Olivera et al 2018 ).…”