Dental Fear among University Students: a three-year follow-up study

Objective: The aim of this follow-up study was to evaluate whether dental fear of university students in Finland changed during the first three years of their studies.

Materials and methods: The study group in 2002 consisted of 234 first year students of the University of Helsinki (186 women and 50 men, mean age 20.7 years). In 2005, 190 of these students participated again in the study (150 women and 40 men). The students were inquired how afraid they were of: visiting a dentist in general, pain, injection, drilling, extraction of third molar, endodontic treatment and periodontal treatment. Both times dental fears were measured with Visual Analogue Scale (VAS, range 0-100). Differences in VAS-scores among men and women between the two study years were compared with Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test.

Results: The median VAS-scores in 2002 and 2005 for men and women are presented in the table. Women had higher median scores than men had for all fears. The young university students were most afraid of endodontic treatment and extraction of third molar. During the three-year follow-up among men the fear of pain and among women the fear of periodontal treatment had increased statistically significantly *(p<0.05).

Conclusion: Only minor changes in dental fear occurred during the three-year follow-up. Dental fear is known to affect dental attendance. To prevent irregular dental attendance, it is important to avoid amplification of fears.