EVALUATING FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO DENTAL ANXIETY IN ORTHODONTIC PATIENTS

Background: Dental anxiety is one of the most common forms of psychological impairment obstructing oral health care, often causing necessary treatments to go unattended. Therefore, investigating the prevalence and associated determinants is important for effective intervention. It also assessed the prevalence of dental anxiety and its prospectors among patients in Baghdad, Iraq, for the planning of tailored patient care approaches.
Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional survey between October 2020 and June 2022 recruited 345 orthodontics patients who came to a private institution for dental care. According to the MDAS, patients scoring 11 or higher were determined to have clinically significant anxiety. A structured questionnaire was administered to collect demographic,
psychological, and socioeconomic information. Statistical analysis was then performed using single and multifactor logistic regression to determine predictors significantly associated with dental anxiety, as advised by the statistician.
Results: The prevalence of dental anxiety was 17.23%. Significant predictors included being female, being more than 60 years old, having existing anxiety or depression, having an education level lower than secondary, having a poor sense of self-efficacy, suffering a physical disease, and having low social support (P<0.05). Multifactor regression reasoned and confirmed all these as strong contributors to the model, verifying the complexity of dental anxiety.
Conclusions: This study shows the high prevalence of dental anxiety and the intricate factors behind it, which require tailoring behavioral approaches in dentistry to factors of psychological and demographic origin.