Dental Anxiety Research Paper

Dental Anxiety:

Dental anxiety has been noted to be significant and a usual problem in both children and adults. It is often considered an obstacle in delivery as well as reception of dental care by dental experts and patients respectively. It is frequently seen as a fear that something bad is going to happen when going for the dental treatment and is also attached with the sense of losing control over the situation.1 Anxiety is a more general unfocused feeling of discomfort or apprehension that is directly related to fear surrounding an unusual environment.2 Dental anxiety can be defined as “the response to situations in which the source of the threat to the individual is unclear, ambiguous or not immediately present. Anticipatory anxiety

It is more specifically characterized by subjective, consciously perceived feelings of threat, nervousness, and tension accompanied by autonomic nervous system arousal. Behaviors associated with anxiety include restlessness, trembling, shortness of breath, fearful facial expressions, muscular tension, and fatigue”.4 There are multifactorial aetiology of dental anxiety occurrence such as watching dental instruments, surrounding noise the two most anxiety arousing being the injection and the drill sound.5 Typically dental anxiety is accompanied by physiological and psychological responses such as increased heart rate, increase blood pressure, altered respiration rate, sweating, trembling, feelings of coming danger and tension. The dentist’s attitude and manner and the dental environment also play an important part in dental anxiety.6Dentistry in modern era has struggled hard to provide an environment which is patient friendly that can consequently reduce the anxiousness frequently felt by individuals.7 Even many novel dental techniques and procedures have been introduced in the field of dentistry over time, but the anxiety towards dentistry had stayed constant over

There are various reasons for that, first of all the high costs of different screening and diagnostic procedures prove to be a hindrance in achieving the goal of health for all. Secondly there are gender differences in health seeking behaviors. Thirdly, medical related needs are put last in the prioritization list until urgent need is felt for consulting a practitioner due to emerging inflation, deepening poverty and other important parts of person’s lives that require urgent attention. Among all these reasons, dental care is a far more neglected and untouched domain. Out of the large population, small proportion of individuals decide to go to dentist for dental procedures when its necessary and of them many people avoid visiting the dentist further due to the pain and anxiety experienced in the first time. Keeping in view the circumstances dentist face every day, music if included in the treatment regimen as an effective means of reducing anxiety, many people can benefit from it. It is a cheap method; it can be of patient’s preference and is associated with no potential side