Dental anxiety: Prevalence and associated factors

Abstract

Objectives: This study aimed to estimate the prevalence of dental anxiety and examine the socio-demographic associations of dental anxiety among a representative sample of UAE college populations. Materials and Methods: Four hundred and thirteen college students of Sharjah University in the UAE completed Modified Corah’s Dental Anxiety Scale (MDAS) (47% males and 53% females). The survey also included questions in a yes/no format with which respondents rated attributions for their anxiety. Results: Prevalence of dental anxiety (MDAS score of 13 or more) was 36%, with overall severity represented by a mean score of 11.52 (SD: 4.88). Students who visited their dentist more than two years ago had significantly higher MDAS scores compared with those who visited their dentist less than two years ago ( t -test, P =0.02). Compared with female students, a significantly higher proportion of males indicated that their last visit to the dentist was more than two years ago (17% vs. 30%, respectively, χ 2 -test, P =0.002). In addition, more than half of the students (55%) perceived a need for a checkup and 54% indicated that they visited the dentist because of problems with their teeth. Conclusions: The findings of this study indicate that although dental anxiety was not associated with gender and frequency of dental visits, feeling of lack of control and pain anticipation were strong predictors of anxiety. These results highlight the important role that dental healthcare providers could play in counseling anxious patients to reduce the impact of these factors on seeking dental care.

Prevalence of and factors associated with dental anxiety among medical and dental students of the Northern State Medical University, Arkhangelsk, North-West Russia

“…Researchers have used global questions [19], different scales [15,16,24,26] or different DAS score cut-offs to assess DA [21], which may complicate the comparability of these studies with our results. The DAS and MDAS are the most frequently used tools to measure DA in university students.…”

“…It has been postulated that women are more susceptible to perceived threats or danger, and that they may describe their fears more openly; while men may be more emotionally stoic and hide their anxieties [37]. Nevertheless, some studies found no sex differences [15,23,24] and mentioned cultural characteristics as a possible explanation [24]. …”

“…Reported predictors for DA have included self-reported need for dental treatment, tobacco use, abnormal attitudes towards food, insufficient oral hygiene, less frequent dental visits and the anticipation of pain [19,24,25]. No relationships between DA and clinically assigned oral health have been studied in young university students, but some studies on other factors showed that female students had higher DA than male students [16,19–22], whereas other studies found no sex differences [15,23,24]. …”

Dental Anxiety and Fear among a University Population in a Sample from Yemen

“…Many questionnaires and scales have been established to investigate dental anxiety and fear [27,28,30,32,35,37]. The DAS is perhaps the most commonly used; it is a four-item, multiple-choice questionnaire that assesses the degree of anxiety.…”

“…Numerous studies have shown that younger subjects are more likely to have dental anxiety than are elderly individuals [25,26]. Many researchers have concentrated on studying dental anxiety in university students [27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37], and the incidence of anxiety ranges from 11% to 27.5% among students at different universities globally [38][39][40]. Higher dental anxiety has been reported in non-dental students than in dental students, which might be because of inadequate dental health education, which leads to high dental anxiety among undergraduate students from nondental colleges [27][28][29], and additional decreases in dental anxiety have been revealed among dental students during the course of their dental training [9,41].…”