Assessing the level of dental anxiety among patients in dental offices in Iasi, using Corah's dental anxiety scale

Abstract

The application of questionnaires to assess the anxiety of patients provides a lot of information that can guide the dental physician in assessing the patient's behaviour prior to addressing specific treatments, but also to find new strategies in the management of dental anxiety behaviour. There is a great variety of self-reported dental anxiety assessments which can be applied, but the most used adult questionnaire is Corah s Dental Anxiety Scale. In this study were invited to participate a total of 153 patients, divided in 3 age groups for each gender, attending 2 private practice dental clinics in Iasi, Romania, over a period of 2 months. By statistical analysis were calculated the mean scores, standard deviations and error, and the confidence interval of mean for gender and age groups, and were obtained descriptive statistics. Scoring the 4 questions of Corah's scale, was significantly higher in females as congruent with other studies; however there was a difference, statistically insignificant between different age groups. Analysis of the data of this study revealed a significant association of anxiety with gender and age.