Dental Anxiety is Inversely Correlated to First Time Visit and Ageing: A Prospective Research

Dental anxiety is a specific term describing the mental status of the patient when visiting dental clinic. This may be applied before dental treatment or during operation. It was our clinical interest to evaluate this psychological status before dental treatment in the waiting room. This research protocol achieved ethics approval by the relevant committee of the hospital. Two hundred fifty six patients agreed to volunteer a few minutes by completing a specially designed questionnaire. According to the protocol, all the patients (n=256) accepted the information leaflet and signed the consent form. The statistical analysis of the data revealed that first time dental patients and the factor "age" are inversely correlated to anxiety at significant levels, p<0.05. Concluding, a relation between social phobia and general form of anxiety may be emphasized requiring further study on the interrelations. Anxiety seemed to be found more commonly in patients experienced a previous painful dental treatment.