Pain Catastrophizing in Dental Students and its Relation with Dental Anxiety and Pain Intensity

Abstract

Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate the pain catastrophizing and dental anxiety among dental students. Additionally, we explore the relation of pain catastrophizing scores with gender, pain intensity and dental treatment experience. Material and Methods: This questionnaire study was conducted among dental students in 2020. The questionnaire, which was prepared via Google forms and students studying in different faculties of dentistry filled out the questionnaire via e-mail. The Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), the Corah's Dental Anxiety Scale (C-DAS), and Pain Catastrophizing Scale (PCS), helped the clinician examine how the participants felt and what they thought regarding pain, were used. Spearman's rho correlation was used to analyze the correlations between the variables. The MANOVA test was used to evaluate whether the main effects of gender, term, and treatment on C-DAS and PCS were significant. Results: Of the total, 22.5% of the students were considered to be catastrophic individuals. According to the regression model, a one-unit increase in VAS value led to an increase of 0.164 in the total PCS score. Similarly, while the increase in the C-DAS score led to an increase of 0.575 in the PCS score, girls' PCS score was higher by 4.091. Conclusion: Our study is the first to report the prevalence of pain catastrophizing among dental students and the effect of gender and PCS-subscales. The increased knowledge level of dental students about pain may effectively reduce the tendency toward pain catastrophizing.