16 May Anxiety common in dental patients…and what we do about it!!
Do you often feel a sense of uneasiness or anxiety while in the waiting room of your dentist in Prescott? If so, you’re not alone. A new study published in BMC Oral Health has found that anxiety and dental phobia levels remained elevated even with patients waiting for a routine cleaning or checkup. One in three patients reported an elevated level of anxiety while awaiting their scheduled dental hygiene appointment.
The authors of the study did not expect to see such a high percentage of dental phobia sufferers when dealing with routine hygiene checkups. Not only that, the procedures that could be classified as painful had no correlation to increased anxiety. The only correlations that were found were that on average, the older the patient, the less they experienced dental fear and those with symptoms of gingivitis also correlated with those who experienced more anxiety.
Authors of the study suggest that fear of the unknown may be a large contributing factor to dental phobia or pretreatment anxiety, along with expectation of pain and a perceived unpredictability of dental treatment. You will be relieved to know that the staff at Prescott Dentistry go above and beyond in an effort to make our patients feel more at ease. Dr. Thompson and the staff explain our biomimetic procedures that are preventative in nature and less invasive than the traditional drill and fill form of dentistry. We offer a comfort menu of options that can make your visit more pleasant, sedation and laughing gas are available, and of course, the gentle, healing, compassionate demeanor all contribute to a better experience.
Contact the doctors and the compassionate team at Prescott Dentistry to ask about non-invasive biomimetic dentistry techniques that are sure to alleviate your pretreatment anxiety.
Images used under creative commons license – commercial use (5/12/2016) Christina Welsh (Flickr)