The Association of Social Media Videos and Patients' Preoperative Anxiety

Impacted tooth extraction is regarded as one of the dental procedures that induces the highest levels of dental anxiety.

The study purpose was to measure and compare anxiety levels in patients undergoing 3rd molar extraction between those who did or did not view videos related to 3rd molar operations.

This prospective cohort study was conducted on patients who presented to the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. The study included patients without any systemic comorbidities who had a indication for the extraction of impacted mandibular third molars. Patients who had previously undergone impacted tooth extractions were excluded from the study.

The predictor variable was exposure to 3rd molar operation videos on social media. The subjects were grouped into categories; group 1, patients who watched videos and group 2, patients who did not watch videos.

The main outcome variables are state anxiety (S-anxiety) scores and trait anxiety (T-anxiety) scores. Anxiety scores were measured 1 week before the surgery and on the day of the surgery.

Age, sex, education level, and whether the video contained animated or real surgical images were used as covariates.

For normally distributed continuous variables, group means were compared using Student's t-test, while nonnormally distributed variables were compared using the Mann-Whitney U test. A P value of <.05 was considered statistically significant.

The sample consisted of 60 patients, with 68.3% female and 31.7% male. In group 1, S-anxiety scores on the surgery day (44.8 ± 10.38) were higher than 1 week before (37.76 ± 8.92), and T-anxiety scores on the surgery day (78.23 ± 5.25) were higher than 1 week before (74.8 ± 5.54). In group 2, S-anxiety scores on the surgery day (35.9 ± 11.27) were higher than 1 week before (32.3 ± 9.53), and T-anxiety scores on the surgery day (79.16 ± 6.32) were higher than 1 week before (75.76 ± 5.55). S-anxiety scores of group 1 were statistically higher than group 2 in both conditions (P < .05), but there was no statistically significant difference between the groups in terms of T-anxiety scores (P > .05).

Watching videos before the operation may be associated with patients' anxiety levels.