RINGKASAN The Relationship between Dental Anxiety and Dental Caries By : Stacia Stefani (160110100003)

Visiting a dental office to get dental treatment can be a scary moment for some people. Dental anxiety is the most common feared situation. It shows very high prevalence of dental anxiety. A lot of factors that can cause this dental anxiety. The factors that can cause dental anxiety are the personality characteristics, fear of pain, past traumatic dental experiences particularly in childhood, the influence of dentally anxious family which elicit fear in a person, and fear of blood. This feeling of anxiety and fear when visiting dental office is callds dental anxiety. Dental anxiety is a very common situation in all ages. But in many cross-sectional studies it shows that the prevalence of dental anxiety reduces with ages. Fear of pain has been linked with the development of dental anxiety in avoidance of dental treatment. Dental anxiety has been associated with poor oral health status. Eitmer et al found that the avoidence of dental treatment is highly

correlated with anxiety scores and with increased of caries morbidity and DMF scores. Patient with dental anxiety have shown that highly anxious patients have higher probability irregular dental attendance or even total avoidence of dental care. This dental anxiety of course can cause problems that people that have dental anxiety do not want to go to the dentist even they really need treatment. And this can cause high prevalence of caries in people with dental anxiety. Caries is the most prevalent oraal disesase. High prevalence of caries can give impact to the overall oral health status. Caries actually can be prevented by regular visit to dentist and the right treatment of teeth and oral. but in patient with dental anxiety, they avoid dental treatment because of their feeling and can impact in bad oral health status. This problem has to be solved because even this is not seems to be a big problem, but the oral health status can give bad impact to overall healt of patient. the solution from this problem is there has to be a better dental teratment so that patient would feel more comfortable. The dentist have to be more care about the patient not only with the treatment but also with the

physiological factor from patient. As we know patient that have dental anxiety tends to have a sign like crying, screaming and so on. In this case, dentist have to be able to calm the patient and make them feel comfort before continuing the treatment itself. There also have to be a enhancement of compentency of the dentists intelf so that the dentist can give a pain-free treatment to the patient. As it has been told before that most pastien have dental anxiety because they fear of pain. By giving pain free treatment, the anxiety can be diminished and the patient will be not fear anymore with dental treatment. To reduce the anxiety of patient, the rehabilitation of dental office can be helpful. With cozy environment and friendly atmosphere, the patient would feel more comfortable and can reduce the patients anxiety.