Management of Dental Anxiety and Fear

Dental pain, anxiety and fear are important factors that prevent patients from seeking dental care. Dental anxiety is a prevalent issue which every dental practitioner will face. As dental anxiety involves personal consequences for the affected patients - as well as hampering the clinical performance of the dental profession – this matter should be taken seriously and dealt with accordingly. The treatment of dental anxiety thus should be within the competence of the general practitioner in this research we will clarify the measures a general dentist can take to understand what is happening with these patients and how to ease the dental treatment of fearful patients. Studies indicate that memory of dental pain is “reconstructed” over time. They found that highly anxious patients tended to overestimate the pain they would feel prior to the dental procedure and also overestimate the pain experienced, when asked to recall it later. This pattern of findings has also been seen in other studies. In a study which examined 60 dental patients who twice underwent oral surgery, the highly anxious patients expected more pain than they actually experienced during the procedure, and also required more time for management than did patients with low anxiety levels