Evaluation of anxiety in a group of adult patients attending a dental surgery unit

Abstract

Abstract Background Dental visits can cause anxiety and fear in some patients. Dental anxiety is considered a state of apprehension tied to a sensation of a loss of control and linked to a feeling that something “terrible” might happen during the dental treatment, this generates discomfort in the patient promoting that some of them avoid the dental visit, which in turns delays seeking treatment thus worsening the prognosis of oral diseases, for this reason the objective of this study is to determine the prevalence of anxiety among individuals attending an initial consultation at a dental surgery unit. Methods The selection of patients was performed during the initial consultation carried out in the Medicine, Surgery and Oral Implantology unit and the following data was registered: hemodynamic parameters (blood pressure, heart rate and oxygen saturation), weight, pain associated to the patient’s reason for consultation, past dental experience, also State-Trait Anxiety Inventory/State-scale (STAI-S) and the modified dental anxiety scale (MDAS) questionnaire was applied to determine the level of anxiety. A descriptive analysis, Mann Whitney test, one way ANOVA, and two-way ANOVA were executed for the statistical analysis. Results The sample consisted in 143 patients, 81 women and 62 men, the average age was 27.37 years old, a statistically significant difference was found in the average scores of anxiety between the group of men and women (p < 0.05); being the average of anxiety (STAI-S and MDAS) higher in women. A statistically significant difference was found between the values of STAI-S and the pain characteristic, finding that anxiety was higher when the patient had pain at the time of consultation (p = 0.001), although this was not found with the values of MDAS. Conclusion The results of this study show that dental anxiety remains a significant issue for almost one third of the sample studied, anxiety is higher in women and may not be linked to previous negative dental experiences.

Keywords

• Blood pressure
• Dental anxiety
• Fear
• Heart rate
• Pain perception
• Prevalence