Anxiety Levels Associated With Noise In The Dental Clinic Among Children OF Age Group 6-15 Years

1Christopher Joel Simon, Mahesh R, Revathy Duraisawamy, *Dhanraj Ganapathy

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Abstract:

Dental fear usually refers to a normal unpleasant emotional reaction to specific threatening stimuli occurring in situations associated with dental treatment, while dental anxiety is an excessive and unreasonable negative emotional state experienced by dental patients. These psychological states consist of apprehension that something dreadful is going to happen in relation to dental treatment. Dental fear and dental anxiety are often used indistinctly in the scientific literature, but they represent different progressive degrees of the same psychological condition. The terms dental fear and anxiety (DFA) will be used throughout this review when we refer to strong negative emotions associated with dental treatment among children. Dental treatment can be perceived as a painful and agonic experience, it can exert influence in the behavior of human beings, especially in children. This could be due to factors such as anxiety, and fear,which, together with anguish generated during dental treatment, can turn a rapid and successful visit into negative experience. Fear or anxiety due to noise produced in the dental clinic is rated third among reasons to avoid dental visits.Dental anxiety is a significant problem for patients and dental care providers.Quite a large number of studies have been conducted to identify the potential anxiety provoking stimuli present in the dental setting. These stimuli include the sight of the needle, smell of different dental materials, noise produced in dental clinic and various aspects of the drill such as its appearance, sound and feeling.The present study is aimed at one such factor that is noise in the dental clinic and its effect on patient's anxiety. Aim: The aim of the present study was to determine anxiety levels associated with noise in a dental clinic. Materials and Method A Survey questionnaire based on Corah's dental anxiety was distributed among the participants .The first part included demographic information such as name, age, gender, and school. The second part of the survey included questions aimed at patient's feelings toward noise in the dental clinic and its possible link to dental anxiety. The data was collected and analysed using Microsoft excel. Result: This study concludes that the noise produced in dental clinic is anxiety provoking and significantly contributes to avoidance of dental treatment. Conclusion Simply asking the patient straightforward questions regarding their dental status may predict the clinical examination results. Patients tend to be familiar with their dental status. This could help the dental practitioner to accomplish more effective time and patient management. It can be concluded from the present study that the prevalence of dental anxiety and fear was relatively more in this south Indian Tamil speaking population and male children were more anxious about dental visits.

Keywords:

anxiety, noise, children, fear, dental clinic

Paper Details
Month1
Year2020
Volume24
IssueIssue 1
Pages7800-7807