The effect of dental anxiety on surgical time of mandibular third molar disimpaction

Abstract

Background: Dental treatment of anxious patients induces stress due to the patients' expectation of pain. This may prolong treatment due to such patients' inability to cooperate during treatment. Aim: The aim of the study was to determine the effect of dental anxiety on surgical time of mandibular third molar (M3) disimpactions at a Nigerian hospital. Subjects and Methods: A prospective study was conducted at the Oral Surgery clinic of Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Kano, between October 2016 and September 2017 to assess the effect of dental anxiety on surgical time of M3 disimpactions using the Modified Dental Anxiety Scale (MDAS). The Patients' biodata, clinical and M3 radiologic data were recorded. Surgical durations were also recorded. Data were analyzed with Statistical Package for Social Sciences for Windows (IBM statistics 23 software). Results: One hundred and sixteen subjects (64 males, 52 females) were studied. Forty-two subjects (36.2%) were mildly anxious, 67 (57.8%) were moderately anxious, and 7 (6.0%) were highly anxious. The females were more anxious and the overall surgical time (OST) of disimpaction correlated with the anxiety levels of the subjects. The OST increased by approximately 0.8 min with every unit rise in the anxiety score. Other factors that affected OST in the study were M3 depth, type of impaction, and root curvature. Conclusion: The patients' dental anxiety increased the surgical time of M3 disimpactions. Clinicians should consider the patients' anxiety among the factors that affect the surgical time of M3 disimpactions. Verbally soothing anxious patients and administering anxiolytic when necessary, may help to reduce the patients' anxiety, and hence, prevent surgical time prolongation.

A Cross-Sectional Study on Incidence and Predictors of Self-Reported Dental Anxiety among Nigerian Public Primary Schoolchildren

“…20 In another study on dental anxiety, 36.2% of respondents reported being mildly anxious, 57.8% reported being moderately anxious, and 6.0% reported being highly anxious. 21 The present findings also align with previous studies that reported that the incidence of dental anxiety is not gender related. 22,23 Also, Folayan et al 22 reported that gender alone could not substantially determine dental anxiety, but it may contribute when combined with other factors.…”

“…The findings also supported the hypothesis that the influence of gender, age, SES, and parental education on schoolchildren's dental anxiety is not statistically significant. Although some studies indicated that gender predicts dental anxiety following their report that dental anxiety was higher in adult females than males, 7,12,[14][15][16][17]21 one study showed that no gender disparity exists in dental anxiety levels among children. 22 In contrast to some research that found that participants' age was a contributing factor to differences in dental anxiety scores, 7,11,12,15 other studies found the opposite, 8,24 which is consistent with our current findings regarding the relationship between age and dental anxiety in schoolchildren.…”

Application of ultrasonic bone knife combined with dental electric motor in the extraction of mandibular middle and low impacted teeth

“…Moreover, when subjected to excessive pressure, its rotational speed decay is greatly improved, and it basically maintains a constant speed to cut dental hard tissues, which greatly reduces the operation time; at the same time, the rate of temperature increase is greatly improved during long time and overload work, and the service life of the electric motor is the life of the electric motor is prolonged and failure is reduced. (MDAS) [12] was used to evaluate the anxiety of patients during ① Pain: Visual Analogue Score (VAS) was used to quantify [13] the degree of postoperative wound pain, VAS value of 0-10, 0 indicates complete painlessness ， 10 indicates unbearable pain, and the larger the number, the more severe the pain.…”

“…Based on the known advantages of UBK and DEM, we assume that the operation can relieve pain, swelling, limited opening and reduce the incidence of postoperative (MDAS) [12] was used to evaluate the anxiety of patients during ① Pain: Visual Analogue Score (VAS) was used to quantify [13] the degree of postoperative wound pain, VAS value of 0-10, 0 indicates complete painlessness ， 10 indicates unbearable pain, and the larger the number, the more severe the pain.…”