Assessment of dental anxiety using modified dental anxiety scale among adults with cleft lip and/or palate
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Published on: February 2, 2020
Marwan Aljohani1,2, Martin Ashley2, Falah R Alshammari3
1Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, College of Dentistry, Taibah University, Saudi Arabia.
Objectives:
This study aimed to investigate dental anxiety levels among adults with cleft lip and/or palate (CL/P) and compare to adults with no orofacial cleft. The study also intended to find out the impact of cleft severity, gender and age on the perceived dental anxiety.
Methods:
The study was composed of a sample of 70 adult participants who received and completed dental treatments. After sending self-addressed envelopes with consent forms and Modified Dental Anxiety Scale (MDAS) to 192 potential participants, 35 participants with CL/P (CL/P group) and 35 participants with no CL/P (control group), agreed to participate. Data were analysed using Mann-Whitney U test. A two-tailed P-value < 0.05 was considered as statistically significant.
Results:
54.3% of adults with CL/P (23 females and 12 males, age range from 16 to 72 years) reported normal dental anxiety, while the remaining 45.7% reported moderate dental anxiety. No extreme dental anxiety were recorded in the CL/P group. These results were similar to the control group and there were no significant differences between groups (p > 0.05). Female participants recorded higher median anxiety scores than male participants in the CL/P group, and participants with cleft lip had higher median scores than participants with cleft lip and palate. However, these were not statistically significant.
Conclusion:
The results suggest that CL/P did not affect dental anxiety levels for participants with the CL/P as there were no extreme cases and their results were comparable to a general non-cleft sample.
