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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Chris VernazzaORCiD, Professor Nick Girdler
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).
Objective: Dental anxiety is a barrier to attendance. Dental non-attenders may seek emergency care and may prefer to receive anxiety management measures for treatment required. Little is know about the preferences of these dental non-attenders for different anxiety management techniques. Understanding such preferences may inform management pathways, improve experiences, alleviate anxieties and encourage a more regular attendance pattern. So, the aim of this study was to gain a greater understanding of the dental anxiety of patients attending a dental access centre for emergency dental treatment and to ascertain preferences for different anxiety management techniques. Design: Cross sectional study involving self-completed questionnaires and clinical observation. Setting: NHS Dental Access Centre, York, UK Subjects and Methods: 200 participants not registered with a general dental practitioner (GDP), aged 18 years or over, experiencing pain, self- referred were recruited on a consecutive sampling basis. Participants completed a questionnaire eliciting demographic and dental history details, dental anxiety and preferences for dental anxiety management options. Main Outcome Measures: Correlation of Modified Dental Anxiety Scale (MDAS) with preference for different dental anxiety management techniques Results: No significant predictive factors were found that explained preferring local anaesthetic to sedation or general anaesthesia for restorations or extractions. Those highly anxious were less likely to consider tell show do techniques (p =0.001) or watching explanatory videos (p = 0.004) to be helpful for overcoming their anxieties than the low or moderate anxiety groups. Conclusions: People attending access centres may represent a group who are unwilling to explore non-pharmacological methods to overcome their anxieties. This supports the need for sedation to provide treatment. Future work may include exploring in more depth the thoughts and opinions of this group of patients to improve understanding of their complex dental attitudes. From this, more effective strategies may be developed to encourage regular dental attendance.
Author(s): Harding A, Vernazza CR, Wilson K, Harding J, Girdler NM
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: British Dental Journal
Year: 2015
Volume: 218
Issue: 7
Pages: 415-421
Print publication date: 01/04/2015
Online publication date: 10/04/2015
Acceptance date: 03/02/2015
Date deposited: 20/03/2015
ISSN (print): 0007-0610
ISSN (electronic): 1476-5373
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/sj.bdj.2015.249
DOI: 10.1038/sj.bdj.2015.249
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