Assessment of anxiety and fear in school children in the pediatric dentistry consultation

Abstract

Fear and anxiety have been recognized as the main reasons that hinder the child’s care in dentistry, for which it is proposed the use of assessment tools, to know their values in patients odontopediátricos. Few investigations on this subject in Latin America, despite its relevance. Objective: to evaluate the levels of child dental anxiety with age in children who attended the service of Dentistry, Faculty of Dentistry University of Carabobo. Material and Methods: the design was not experimental and transactional and descriptive correlational. We considered a sample of 120 school children, who answered the Corah Dental Anxiety Scale, Scale assessment and test dental fears Venham drawings. Results: 89.17% of children showed anxiety as the test Venham drawings, while Corah Anxiety Scale showed anxiety in 80.8%, dropping to 6 years of age a high level of anxiety with 20%, highlighting the scale of assessment of dental fears a percentage of 70.9%, which was that at 6, 7 and 8 highlighted a high level of dental fear between 16-22% respectively. Conclusions: the levels of child dental fear and anxiety decreased with age, speaking at 6 years at a higher rate in this study the illustrations made by the patients reported moderate levels of anxiety and high in 76%.