Abstract
BackgroundBased on the hypothesis that a vicious cycle of dental fear exists, whereby the consequences of fear tend to maintain that fear, the relationship between dental fear, self-reported oral health status and the use of dental services was explored.MethodsThe study used a telephone interview survey with interviews predominantly conducted in 2002. A random sample of 6,112 Australian residents aged 16 years and over was selected from 13 strata across all States and Territories. Data were weighted across strata and by age and sex to obtain unbiased population estimates.ResultsPeople with higher dental fear visited the dentist less often and indicated a longer expected time before visiting a dentist in the future. Higher dental fear was associated with greater perceived need for dental treatment, increased social impact of oral ill-health and worse self-rated oral health. Visiting patterns associated with higher dental fear were more likely to be symptom driven with dental visits more likely to be for a problem or for the relief of pain. All the relationships assumed by a vicious cycle of dental fear were significant. In all, 29.2% of people who were very afraid of going to the dentist had delayed dental visiting, poor oral health and symptom-driven treatment seeking compared to 11.6% of people with no dental fear.ConclusionResults are consistent with a hypothesised vicious cycle of dental fear whereby people with high dental fear are more likely to delay treatment, leading to more extensive dental problems and symptomatic visiting patterns which feed back into the maintenance or exacerbation of existing dental fear.
Highlights
Based on the hypothesis that a vicious cycle of dental fear exists, whereby the consequences of fear tend to maintain that fear, the relationship between dental fear, self-reported oral health status and the use of dental services was explored
The data for the study are derived from the 2002 National Dental Telephone Interview Survey (NDTIS) [19] that used computer assisted telephone interviews of a random sample of people across Australia aged five years and over
While causality can obviously not be established in a study such as this, the results of the current study are consistent with the notion of a vicious cycle of dental fear whereby the delaying of dental visits is related to increased dental problems which is related to increased invasive emergency treatment which, in turn, is related to greater dental fear and anxiety
Summary
Based on the hypothesis that a vicious cycle of dental fear exists, whereby the consequences of fear tend to maintain that fear, the relationship between dental fear, self-reported oral health status and the use of dental services was explored. Child dental fear has been reported to be as high as 43 per cent [3] in some countries while estimates of the prevalence of high dental fear among Australian adults are about 16 per cent [4,5]. Both the high prevalence of dental fear and the ramifications in terms of disease experience (page number not for citation purposes). A number of studies have found an association between dental fear and both visiting patterns and disease experience. Similar findings have been reported in other research [7,8]
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