Muhammad Rizwan Nazeer, Aisha Salim, Robia Ghafoor, Farhan Raza Khan.
Self-Assessment of Dental Anxiety among patients Visiting a Tertiary Care Hospital.
J Pak Dent Assoc Jan ;26(3):112-7.

Objectives: To assess the dental anxiety among patients visiting dental clinics of a teaching institution.To evaluate different factors associated with the dental anxiety. Methodology: A cross sectional study was carried out at the Aga Khan University Hospital dental clinics from September 2008- November 2008. A total of 174 otherwise physically healthy males and females patients who presented for the dental treatment were asked to get inducted in the present study through an informed consent. Data was collected using a self-administered questionnaire which comprised of three parts. The first part of the questionnaire consisted of demographic information; the second part of it assessed the level of dental anxiety; whereas the last part evaluated different factors related to the dental anxiety. Results: There were 174 participants (88 males and 86 females) in the study. The mean age of the participants was 35 +- 15years. A statistically significant association was found between the age and dental anxiety, as younger patients reported higher level of dental anxiety (p = 0.046). Dental anxiety was more prevalent among females than males; however the association was not found to be statistically significant. Factors such as bleeding during treatment (p = < 0.01), local anesthetic injection (p= < 0.01), appearance of dental chair (p= < 0.02), fear of pain during the use of dental drill (p= < 0.01) were significantly associated with dental anxiety. Conclusions: Dental anxiety was found to be associated with young age, female gender and need of local anesthesia. KEYWORDS Dental anxiety, dental fear, modified dental anxiety scale, young adults.

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