| Dental fear describes the situation when patients are scared by dental therapy. Thesepatients feel upset, palpitate, sweat, shout, hardly breathe, and elude or decline duringdental therapy. Dental fear is a heavy problem all around the world. It harms a lot andhappens in all ranges of age, lowering early attendance rate, affecting medical quality andwork efficiency, worsening relationships between doctors and patients and resulting in badside effects. It is a special kind of trait anxiety, which is also a unique manifestation,occurred in the process of dental treatment. With the development of the living standard,modern medical model has changed from a simple biological model to aphysiological-psychological-social model. Psychological situation of people is closelyrelated with the development of disease. Therefore, studying ranking of patients withdental fear and finding simple and practical approaches of therapy is very important inprognosis and treatment of patients with dental fear.This study is mainly on the basis of reevaluation of Chinese Edition of DAI inextraction patients. Then we rank patients with dental fear according to the score of DAI,and treat them with exposure therapy. We propose suggestions on standard therapeuticsystem of dental fear according to our research, hoping to reach the aim of betteralleviating dental fear.The results of this research are as follows:1. The Chinese Edition of DAI has was re-evaluated. Experts and the general publicagreed that the content could be easily accepted and could reflect the overallconditions. The correlation of test-retest reliability was0.943and Cronbach’salpha coefficient reliability as well as split-half reliability was greater than0.9. Contract validity and criterion-related validity were both statistically significant.Analysis of confirmatory factor for the scale was conducted to find a GFI that wasgreater than0.9.2. According to DAI Chinese version of the score of dental fear, patients wereassessed and classified. The patients with stress and fear and their scores over72were diagnosed with dental fear. Among them, scores ranges between72and108were classified to slight fear, scores ranges between108and144were classifiedto moderate fear, and scores ranges between144and180were classified to severefear. By using statistical analysis and clinical demonstration, the results showedhigh feasibility for the ranking patients according to DAI.3. The correlation analysis was made on the related factors for the dental patientswith varying degrees of fear. The results showed there was no significantcorrelations with gender, age, marital status, education and suffering for thepatients with slight and moderate dental fear (P>0.05), while there was asignificant correlation with the scores of self-assessment of fear for dental therapy(P<0.05). In addition, there was no significant correlations with gender, age andmarital status for the patients with slight and moderate dental fear (P>0.05).However, there were significant correlations with education, suffering and thescores of self-assessment of fear for dental therapy (P<0.05).4. The randomized controlled clinical trial was designed to observe the effects ofexposure therapy for the patients with dental fear. The results demonstrated thatthe relieving effects of exposure therapy was better than that in control group(p<0.05). The scores of Chinese DAI decreased significantly for the patientsadministrated with exposure therapy. Besides, the scores of self-assessment of fearfor dental therapy in exposure group was significantly lower than control group(P<0.05).5. The standardized therapy system was initially proposed for the cure of dental fear.The physical therapy or exposure therapy was adopted for patients with slightdental fear, the exposure therapy was adopted for patients with moderate dental fear and the drug treatment was adopted for patients with severe dental fear.Conclusions:1. Chinese version of DAI has good reliability and validity as well as a goodpracticality in extraction patients.2. The feasibility is in a high degree when the patients are evaluated in gradesaccording to the scores of Chinese version of DAI.3. Dental fear is irrespective of gender, age or marriage status, but is related to thescores of self-assessment of fear for dental therapy. Besides, patients with varyingscores have different degrees of pathology. Patients with serious DF are alsoinfluenced by the degree of education and whether they have suffered frompainful experience. On the other hand, patients with mild and moderate DF areinfluenced by none of these factors.4. Exposure therapy for dental fear patients had good fear mitigation effect.5. The standardized therapy system on dental fear was initially proposed afterassessment of the patients’ dental fear degree. |
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