Dental Fear and Anxiety in Pediatric Patients

Dental anxiety and phobia can have adverse impacts on a children¿s quality of life, and hence it is imperative to identify and alleviate these significant obstacles to pave the way for better oral health and overall well-being of the individual. It is the duty and responsibility of the dentist to provide excellent dental care to these patients with special needs as well. Management of these patients should be an integral part of clinical practice, as a substantial proportion of the population suffers from anxiety and fear. Therapy should be customized to each individual following proper evaluation, and should be based on the dentist¿s experience, expertise, degree of anxiety, patient intellect, age, cooperation, and clinical situation. The dentist should communicate with the patient and identify their source of fear and anxiety, with adjuvant use of self-reporting anxiety and fear scales to enable categorization as mild, moderate, or extreme anxiety or dental-phobic. Manifold psychological therapies are employed to mollify emotional, cognitive, behavioural, and physiological dimensions of dental anxiety and fear.