Dental caries experience and prevalence of children afraid of dental treatment

Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine the clinical outcome with regard to dental caries of high self reported dental anxiety in a group of Scottish secondary schoolchildren. 1103 children participated in the study, mean age 14 yr (sd 0.35 yr), and the prevalence of high dental anxiety was 7.1% (95% CI = 5.6%, 8.6%). When these children were compared with their contemporaries their DMFT and all its components were higher but only the mean MT reached statistical significance after adjusting for gender and social class. Children with a high dental anxiety were 62% more likely to have at least 1 missing tooth due to caries. In addition this group when compared to the rest of the study population, had a significantly lower mean number of teeth fissure sealed and a lower proportion of children with sealants. No similar trend was obvious for children who had a high general fear. The dentally anxious more accurately perceived their treatment need and were more likely to defer, cancel or not turn up for dental appointments.

Prevalence of Dental Anxiety in 7- to 11-Year-Old Children and Its Relationship to Dental Caries

“…It was found that DMFT-dfs increased significantly with increasing CFSS-DS values. The findings of our study are similar to some previous studies [3,13,14,21] , but not to others [2,15,25] in which no association was found between dental fear and caries. A probable explanation is that the caries experience of anxious individuals in some studies is not markedly worse than that of non-anxious counterparts, but the negative dental health attitudes and behavior of the former suggested that their dental health might have deteriorated over time had repeated observations been made [13] .…”

“…Associations between children's dental fear and oral health status have been reported [3,13,14] . Dental fear has been reported to be associated with a range of adverse behavioral and dental health characteristics.…”

Reliability and validity of a faces version of the Modified Child Dental Anxiety Scale

“…Bedi et al 22 found that adolescents with high dental anxiety had a significantly higher DMFT than their peers with low dental anxiety. This finding has been confirmed for younger children, as dentally anxious 5-year-olds were found to have had significantly more caries experience than non-dentally anxious children 23 .…”

Dental anxiety, distress at induction and postoperative morbidity in children undergoing tooth extraction using general anaesthesia

“…2 A child's dental fear is more strongly associated with the subjective experience of pain and trauma than with objective dental pathology 3 and is influenced by parental, particularly maternal anxiety [4][5][6] and is greatest in families with high caries levels. 7,8 General anaesthesia facilitates operative dental treatment but does little to manage dental anxiety. Arch et al, 9 comparing the level of postoperative anxiety in children undergoing CDGA extractions to those receiving local analgesia facilitated by nitrous oxide inhalation sedation, reported that the choice of inhalation sedation favoured reduced postoperative anxiety despite similar pre-operative anxiety levels.…”