Dental Anxiety in Nigerian Patients

OBJECTIVE: To determine the prevalence, aetiology and factors associated with dental anxiety in Nigerian patients so as to minimize these factors thus enhancing the utilization of oral health care. METHODS: A questionnaire was used to asses demographic data, educational status, occupation and past dental history of adolescent and adult patients attending the Dental Centre of Lagos University Teaching Hospital. Two instruments namely The Modified Dental Anxiety Scale (MDAS)1 and the Dental Concerns Assessment (DCA) developed by Clarke2 were used to assess the anxiety levels of patients undergoing different dental procedures. The Epi info (version 6) statistical software was used for data Entry, Results: A total of 202 respondents participated in the study (86 males, 116 females). Mean age was 29.13 ± 8.6 years; age range was 18-60 years. The population mean anxiety score was 12.4 + 3.9, females had higher mean anxiety score 14.9 + 14.1 than males 13.1 + 4.3 while older people of 45 years and above had lower mean anxiety score than younger people aged 21-25 years. People within the low education class had higher mean anxiety score of 42.1% compared to the high education class with 14.9%. The prevalence of dental anxiety in this study is 62.8%, it is significantly associated with educational status (P= 0.0205) and sex (P= 0.0100). Extractions in 71(35.1%) respondents was the commonest dental procedure which cause anxiety in patients during treatment followed by local anesthetic injections in 67(33.2%) respondents. CONCLUSION: The prevalence of Dental anxiety in this study is high (62.8%). Dental procedures which cause pain tend to arouse anxiety, extraction in this study is the major cause of anxiety in patients; therefore, measures to alleviate pain of dental treatment are very important to reduce anxiety. Level of education and sex are significantly associated with dental anxiety.