In the literature, the influence of parents who suffer from dental anxiety and a previous unpleasant experience at the dentist are cited as the two most common causes of dental anxiety in children. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between socioeconomic factors and the development of dental anxiety in children aged 9 to 12 years. Petrović, D.; Cicvarić, O.; Šimunović-Erpušina, M.;Ivančić Jokić, N.; Bakarčić, D.; Bučević Sojčić, P.; Jurić, H. The Role of Family Factors in the Development of Dental Anxiety in Children. Medicina 2024, 60, 180. https://doi.org/10.3390/ medicina60010180
Dental anxiety is a common phenomenon in children who come to the dentists office. Severe dental anxiety in children who visit the dental office not only leads to the failure of normal dental treatment, but also casts a psychological shadow on dental anxiety in adult patients . Assessment of dental anxiety using a questionnaire is the most commonly used method for assessing dental anxiety in pediatric patients. Since children, especially depending on the age of the child, cannot always clearly express potential dental anxiety and almost always come accompanied by their parents, questionnaires for 7 of 12 p 0.51 0.77 0.46 >0.01 Medicina 2024, 60, 180
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The results of this study show that the mean score of the CFSS-DS questionnaire completed by children visiting a specialist dental practice is 27.76 (SD = 8.97). This means that in the studied group of children, more than 86% of them experience some level of fear of dental procedures but do not report dental anxiety, while according to the thresholds for classification, slightly more than 13% of them have an abnormal level of dental anxiety. In their study, Wu and Gao found that 33.1% of children who completed the CFSS-DS showed dental anxiety. In total, 15.3% of the children who completed the questionnaire showed a moderate level of dental anxiety by achieving numerical scores between 32 and 39 on the questionnaire, while 17.8% of the children who completed the questionnaire achiev
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Alsadat et al. , who investigated the relationship between childrens dental anxiety and dental caries, reported an average CFSS-DS test score of 26.09, with only 12.50% of children reporting higher levels of dental anxiety. Differences in research results may depend primarily on cultural differences, the availability of dental care and the way a child is brought up.
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Based on the research findings, we conclude that sociodemographic factors, i.e., the childs gender and self-rated SES, as well as the dentist the child visits, whether a specialist or a primary care doctor, are not statistically significant predictors of dental anxiety in children. Shindova et al. found in their study that gender has an influence on dental anxiety. Female respondents to the CFSS-DS questionnaire reported a higher level of dental anxiety than male respondents. The study by Majstorovi et al. found that dental anxiety is more common in adolescent girls than in boys. In a study of a population of children aged 6 to 12 years, cross-cultural studies on the aetiology of dental anxiety could help to clarify these contradictory findings regarding the relationship between gender and dental anxiety . At the bivariate correlation level, we found a statistically significant association between female gender and dental anxiety in children, but in the regression
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