Research Article Dental Fear among Medical and Dental Undergraduates

License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Objective. To assess the prevalence and level of dental fear among health related undergraduates and to identify factors causing such fear using Kleinknecht’s Dental Fear Survey (DFS) questionnaire. Methods. Kleinknecht’s DFS questionnaire was used to assess dental fear and anxiety among the entire enrollment of the medical and dental undergraduates ’ of the University of Malaya. Results. Overall response rate was 82.2%. Dental students reported higher prevalence of dental fear (96.0 % versus 90.4%). However, most of the fear encountered among dental students was in the low fear category as compared to their medical counterpart (69.2 versus 51.2%). Significantly more medical students cancelled dental appointment due to fear compared to dental students