Dental anxiety and its possible effects on caries prevalence among a group of Jordanian adults

Abstract EN

Objective : to evaluate the prevalence of dental anxiety and to assess its relationship with caries prevalence among Jordanian adults.

Methods : A cross sectional study was conducted to choose a non-random convenient sample, consisting of 500 adult dentate patients, (265 males, 235 females) of age range between 19 and 55 years attending the diagnostic dental clinic at Marka Military Medical Center between November 2010 and January 2011.

Data were collected through a questionnaire that was based on the Modified Dental Anxiety Scale.

Patients were examined for dental caries prevalence using the decayed, missing and filled teeth (DMFT) index, according to World Health Organization guidelines.

Results : only 44 patients (8.8 %) had high dental anxiety scores (≥ 19, Modified Dental Anxiety Scale), while the remaining individuals (91.2 %) showed moderate to low dental anxiety (≤ 18, Modified Dental Anxiety Scale).The mean Dental Anxiety score of the study sample was 10.61.

For males, it was 9.78 and for females it was 11.55, with statistical significant difference between both genders (p-value < 0.001, t- test).

Regarding its relationship with age, the mean dental anxiety score was 11.06 for the younger age group and declined to 8.64 for older age groups.

Statistical significant difference among different age groups was noticed (p- value = 0.001, ANOVA test).

Dental needle was the most fearful stimulus in dental clinic for both genders, followed by tooth drilling.

Individuals with high dental anxiety (≥ 19, Modified Dental Anxiety Scale) had a mean decayed value of 3.16 while individuals with low dental anxiety had a mean decayed value of 2.05.

The difference between both groups was statistically significant (p-value = 0.001, ANOVA test).

The differences between other components of DMFT index were not statistically significant.

Conclusion : dental anxiety remains a significant problem for many patients of both gender and among different age groups of the examined Jordanian adults.

Dental anxiety had negative effect on oral health status by increasing the prevalence of decayed teeth.

Further studies should be carried out using larger random samples before generalizing this conclusion.