Assessment of General Anxiety and Dental Anxiety in Low-Income Adult Dental Patients

Abstract

One hundred million people in the US neglect needed dental visits because of dental-treatment-associated anxiety (dental anxiety). Our study aimed to assess whether there is a correlation between general anxiety and dental anxiety in lowincome dental patients. For general anxiety and dental anxiety assessments, we used the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory with 40 questions (STAI-40) and the Dental Anxiety Scale Revised (DASR) questionnaires respectively. We surveyed 210 lowincome dental patients. We correlated the general and dental anxiety levels with demographics, missed appointments, caries risk and patient’s perception of the dental treatment to evaluate the impact of general anxiety and dental anxiety on patients’ oral health. Female patients are more affected by anxiety than male patients. Asian-Americans are less anxious than white patients and there was no significant difference attributed to age regarding dental anxiety, but generally anxious patients were slightly younger than dentally anxious patients. Interestingly, we did not find any correlation between dental anxiety and caries risk and only a marginal positive association between dental anxiety and missed appointments. We concluded that general and dental anxiety are correlated conditions that mostly affect female low-income patients.