Research Information System
14th EAPD Congress, Lugano, Switzerland, 20 - 23 June 2018, pp.34
AIM Although there are many studies on dental anxiety, there is not much information about dentists’ perspectives towards anxious patients. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess the attitudes of Istanbul’s dentists towards children with dental anxiety. METHODS A self-administered questionnaire consisted of 24 multiple-choice questions were distributed to 463 dental practitioners in Istanbul via e-mail or hard copy. The questionnaire section includes questions regarding (i) demographic information, (ii) dentists’ experience, (iii) psychological status, and (iv) behaviour management techniques. The data was obtained and analyzed by SPSS version 23.0. Descriptive statistics were calculated, Chi-square test, Fisher’s exact test, the Mann-Whitney U test, and Spearman’s correlation test was used with P value fixed at 0.05. RESULTS 34.13% of the dentists were reported that they experienced different rates of stress when treating children, 49.24% were said that treating children was difficult, 24.41% of them were reluctant to treat children. While the majority of dentists utilized basic behaviour management techniques (90.6%), 5.41% apply different local anaesthesia techniques, 2.84% conscious/deep sedation, 1.13% general anaesthesia and 0.56% hypnosis. 24.5% of the dentists who considered themselves as “not good” in the treatment of children with dental anxiety; and they still did not intend to have any education about dental anxiety management. Dentists with less professional experience feel more stressed when coping with anxious children (p0.05). CONCLUSIONS An increased focus on behaviour management techniques during undergraduate program may help to improve the treatment of children with dental anxiety.