Despite the technological advances in modern dentistry, anxiety about dental treatment and fear
of pain associated with dentistry remains widespread. Fear associated with dental treatment
has been ranked the fifth most common fear and the fifth among the intense fears and phobias in
the general population’ ‘. It is a major issue with respect to the provision of dental care, leading to
irregular dental attendance, delay in seeking treatment or its avoidance altogethee ‘. Surveys show that a sizeable proportion of the general population avoid making regular visits to the dentist. The UK adult dental health survey of 1988 had showns that 45% of dentate adults stated fear was the most important barrier to dental carex. Little seems to have changed after ten years, the 1998 adult dental health survey shows that 43% of adult dentate men and 55% of women felt anxious about
going to the dentist. Forty percent of dentate adults aged 16-24 years and 42% of those aged 65 years and over felt anxious about going to the dentist’. Accurately assessing dental phobia is important and various instruments have been developed to measure it. One of the most widely used and studied instrument for measuring dental anxiety is the ‘The Corah Dental Anxiety Scale DAS)”‘.”. It was developed to assess the tendency to appraise dental treatment situations as dangerous and threatening”. This includes four multiple choice questions, each with five alternative responses ranging in value from 1 to 5, with one being the most calm choice and 5 being the most anxious choice, dealing with feelings and physiological reactions in different dental situations. Thus DAS scores may range from 4 to 20. Corah considered most highly anxious patients to score I3 or higher on the scale”. DAS is considered easy to use and appropriate to capture an overall level of dental anxiety or dental phobia.
Dental anxiety prevalence scores have ranged from as low as 4%12 to almost a third of the
population under study (33%). In the former study dental anxiety was measured using the Corah
Dental Anxiety Scale and showed that older women were less anxious than younger women. High levels of dental anxiety were correlated with longer intervals between dental visits, poorer oral function and aesthetics and a higher frequency of oral symptoms. While in the latter study, children from low-income families were shown to have significantly higher levels of dental anxiety than
the average population of the same age groupt. The Corah’s Dental Anxiety Scale has been used
in a number of prevalence studies among different cultures and groups, including Singapore, Australia, Russia, Iceland and North America with levels ranging between 13% to 2l%. Dental anxiety
has been shown to vary according to age. The distribution of high dental anxiety and age show
significantly greater anxiety in the 20-40 year age group compared to both younger and older age
groups. However, some studies report that dental anxiety decreases with age. While others have
not found any age differences.
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