Pre and Post-Operative Dental Pain and Anxiety in Patients Undergoing Routine Dental Extraction, Peshawar

OBJECTIVES: To determine the pre and post-operative dental pain intensity and dental anxiety in patients undergoing tooth extraction and providing counselling with dental treatments.  METHODOLOGY: It was a comparative study conducted in dental hospitals of Peshawar i.e. Sardar Begum Dental College and Khyber College of Dentistry. A total of 200 participants were selected for this study through simple random sampling technique. Half of the participants (N=100) received dental treatment with counselling, whereas half participants (N=100) got only dental treatment. Informed consent was taken from the participants. Both genders having an age range of 18-60 years were included in the study. Those patients who have severe or other associated dental/medical problems were excluded from the study. Modified Wisconsin Brief Pain Questionnaire and Dental Anxiety Scale-Revised were used for data collection. Both questionnaires have high reliability and validity. The patients were counselled from time to time during the tooth extraction procedure to reduce their anxieties and divert their mind from dental tools and pain. The data was analysed using SPSS 22.0 version.  RESULTS: The outcome of the study showed that the pain severity and dental anxiety was reduced in the patients taking dental treatment along with counselling after the dental extraction as compared to the patients having only dental treatment. Pain inference also improved after tooth extraction. CONCLUSION: Dentists should need to learn counselling skills to provide relief to patients from dental pain and anxiety. Patients suffering from dental pain or diseases also require some psychological interventions along with dental treatment