Dental Anxiety, Smoking and Snuff Use among Dental Patients

Background and Aims: Dental anxiety often causes psychological problems including the fear that have a negative impact on dental treatment. Periodontal health and dental deteriorating might be caused by the patient’s interference with dental fear. The current study aims to evaluate dental anxiety, smoking and snuff use in dental patients. Methods:One hundred eighty consecutive dental patients with meanage ±SD 31.45±13.75 were investigated for dental anxiety, smoking, and snuff use.The evaluation of dental anxiety was measured with the specific question “Do youfeel any type of anxiety while visiting the dentist?” and their answers were givenas follows: “Absolutely not”, “Somehow” and “Extreme fear”. Tobacco use wasinvestigated with the question “Do you smoke or take snuff?” with the alternatereplies “Absolutely not”, “regularly on a daily basis” and “occasionally. Chi-squaretest and multiple regression analysis were carried out in statistical analysisusing SPSS version 20. Results:Among one hundred eighty dental patients, higher dental anxiety was reported in 32 (17.8%) being common among women (71.9%) than men (28.1%). General mood and social situation was reported negative in 9 and 36 patients respectively. It was observed that tobacco use on routine a basis was more common among men (8.5%) than women (1.5%). Age played key a role in dental fears among patients. Patients of young age feel more anxious than mature or older aged patients. Higher dental anxiety and fear was observed in those dental patients who used snuff on a regular basis compared to occasional and no users at all while controlling for age, social status, and general mood. It was observed that chain smokers feel more anxious compared to occasional or no smoking at all, when smoking was added to the model and asked the participants about their visits to the dentists. Conclusion: Our study findings were common vulnerability factors among dental patients related to dental anxiety or fear, smoking, and snuff use. The reason for patients' anxiety was found to be the fear of pain which was more common among women compared to men. Also, Regular tobacco users felt more anxious than occasional or no users at all. Hence, dentists should focus on anxiety alleviation among patients while treatment and follow-up call for maintenance. Keywords: Dental anxiety, Tobacco use, Dental fear