Methods: A cross-sectional study (n=120) was conducted on patients who sought care at TUKSoD. Participants were administered semi-structured diagnostic interview assessing DSM-IV specific phobia for dental procedures and completed a self-reported battery of questionnaires by telephone or online. Information about dental anxiety, dental care avoidance, blood-injection injury (BII) phobia, pain, social appearance anxiety, and optimism among others was collected. Mean difference in psychological constructs by type of patient was explored using t-tests. Mutivariate linear regression was also conducted to explore significant predictors of dental anxiety (p<0.05).
Results: Participant’s mean age was 39±13.1. They were mainly females (54%) and African-American (52.5%) and half had an annual family income below $20,000. About 65% had regular dental appointments, and 35% came for emergency care. The majority had moderate anxiety (53.3%), and 20% met the criteria for diagnosis of specific phobia of dentists. One third failed to attend a scheduled dental appointment. However, no differences by anxiety levels or phobia diagnosis were found. Regular patients had better distress tolerance and awareness whereas the phobia diagnosis and re-experiencing of symptoms were more prevalent among emergency patients (p<0.001). Age, BII phobic avoidance, social appearance anxiety and pain experienced at last dental visit significantly predicted dental anxiety after adjusting for potential confounders.
Conclusions: Existing variations in prevalence of anxiety may be the result of the type of instrument used for the assessment. Dental anxiety was positively correlated with measures of maladaptative psychological processes (e.g., appearance anxiety) and phobic avoidance. Targeting these related psychological constructs may improve the management of anxiety treatment among patients seeking care.