Prevalence of Dental Anxiety and Associated Factors among Indian Children

S Sathyaprasad,Ss Lalugol,J George

doi:10.4034/pboci.2018.181.65

S Sathyaprasad, Ss Lalugol + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.4034/pboci.2018.181.65

Copy DOI

Abstract

Objective: To determine the prevalence of dental anxiety and associated factors among 5 to10 years old Indian children. Material and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, the sample was composed by 462 children (240 male and 222 female). Questionnaires consisting of dental anxiety scales were distributed to mother-child pair participants. Children fear survey schedule-dental subscale was used to assess child dental anxiety and Corah’s dental anxiety scale was used to measure maternal dental anxiety. Age, gender, religion were also recorded to check the correlation of these factors with the child dental anxiety. Data was analyzed using SPSS software. Fisher’s exact test and Pearson correlation tests were applied. The level of significance was set at 5%. Results: The cut-off score for CFSS-DS was 36. The prevalence of dental anxiety was 24.5% among 5 to 10 year old children. Although a statistically significant association was found between maternal and child dental anxiety (p=0.000), no significant association existed between age, gender, culture (religion) and child dental anxiety (p>0.05). Conclusion: Prevalence of dental anxiety was high in the Indian child population. Maternal dental anxiety was found to significantly influence the child dental anxiety, as compared to age, gender or the religion.

Highlights

Mild fear and anxiety are expected experiences, consistent with normal development, but they become a concern and potentially in need of treatment when the anxiety is disproportionate to the actual threat, and daily functioning becomes impaired [1]
Data Collection Child dental anxiety was assessed using Children's Fear Survey Schedule - Dental Subscale (CFSS-DS), which consisted of 15 items related to different aspects of dental treatment and Corah's dental anxiety scale (DAS) was used to assess dental anxiety among mothers of respective children
The normative data obtained in the present study showed that 24.5% of the small subset representative of Indian child population suffers from some degree of dental anxiety

Summary

Introduction

Mild fear and anxiety are expected experiences, consistent with normal development, but they become a concern and potentially in need of treatment when the anxiety is disproportionate to the actual threat, and daily functioning becomes impaired [1]. Dental anxiety is defined as a feeling of apprehension about dental treatment that is not necessarily connected to a specific external stimulus. Dentists consider the fearful disruptive child to be among the most problematic in their clinical work and are eventually forced to treat these children in such ways that do little to reduce the anxiety of the child and in some cases cause dental anxiety to increase [3]. This leads to deteriorating dental health [4]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion