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ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLES |
Fear In Dentistry And Ethical Approach To Fear
Dr. Serap AKYÜZa, Dt. Özgür Önder KUŞÇUa, Dr. Semra AKGÖZb, Dr. Ayşegül DEMİRHAN ERDEMİRc, Dr. Elif ATICIc
aPedodonti AD, Marmara Üniversitesi Diş Hekimliği Fakültesi, İSTANBUL, bBiyoistatistik AD,cDeontoloji AD, Uludağ Üniversitesi Tıp Fakültesi, BURSA
Objective: Anxiety and fear are to varying degrees present in the minds of many patients during dental procedures. Fear of dentists keeps many people away from getting dental services. First step to be done is to understand patient's fear and to determine its level. The aim of the recent study is to determine the anxiety levels of dental patients by different scales and discuss the results under ethical considerations.
Material and Methods: One hundred adult patients who attend to the dental clinics of Marmara University, Faculty of Dentistry were included to the study with their acceptation for participation. Fear and anxiety levels were determined by Dental Anxiety Scale-DAS, Dental Fear Scale-DFS and Milgrom Item.
Results: Patients who participated to the study were found 45% anxious and 55% non-anxious accourding to the Milgrom Item. Anxious patients got higher DAS and DFS scores where as non-anxious ones got lower scores which represents statistically significant relation between Milgrom Item and DAS, DFS.
Conclusion: It's concluded that fear and anxiety are important and should better be determined before the treatment by various tests. We believe that patients can't cope alone with their fear of dentists and it is also the dentist's ethical responsibility to produce solutions to the patients.Keywords: Fear of dentist, anxiety of dentist, anxiety scale,
ethics of fear, DFS, DASTurkiye Klinikleri J Med Ethics 2005, 13:26-33
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