Dental Anxiety Prevalence and Associated Factors among Patients Attending the Academy Dental Teaching Hospital – Khartoum, Sudan

Aya Khalid El Faki¹ and Elhadi Mohieldin Awooda^1,

¹Department of Restorative and Community Dentistry, Faculty of Dentistry, University of Medical Sciences and Technology, Khartoum, Sudan

Cite this paper:
Aya Khalid El Faki and Elhadi Mohieldin Awooda. Dental Anxiety Prevalence and Associated Factors among Patients Attending the Academy Dental Teaching Hospital – Khartoum, Sudan. American Journal of Medical Sciences and Medicine. 2016; 4(4):82-86. doi: 10.12691/ajmsm-4-4-3

Abstract

Aim: To assess the prevalence of dental anxiety and the possible associated factors among adult patients. Materials and Methods: A descriptive, Cross-sectional, hospital based study among 384 patients (age 18-65 year) attended the outpatient clinic at Academy dental teaching hospital from period of February 2015 to April 2015. Corah’s dental anxiety questionnaire was completed by the participants that included three sections: demographic data and factors that could be associated with dental anxiety, Part (A) score assessing dental anxiety before receiving the treatment and Part (B) score assessing dental anxiety during or after receiving dental treatment. Chi-square test was used for association with the level of significance set at P <0.05. Results: Dental anxiety prevalence before receiving dental treatment (DAS-R score of 13 or more) was 26.1%, while during or after receiving the treatment was 26.8%. Dental anxiety was found to be associated with age (P = 0.00), pervious dental experience and socioeconomic status (P = 0.15) in both part (A) and (B) scores while gender (P=0.015 with a part A and P=0.009 with part B), number of dental visits (P=0.003 with part (A) and 0.017 with part (B) score). Occupation, educational level and type of treatment were found to be associated with part (A) score only. Conclusion: Dental anxiety in its different levels was found to be prevalent among all participants involved in this study. Dental healthcare providers could play an important role in counseling anxious patients to reduce the impact of these factors when seeking dental care.

Keywords:
dental anxiety dental fear anxiety before treatment anxiety after treatment Corah’s Dental Anxiety Scale

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