Background: Dental fear has been singled out as one of the most troublesome problems facing paediatric dentistry today. Children with dental fear may avoid visiting dentists; therefore, their oral health protection is often compromised. However, the aetiology of dental fear is still not entirely understood.
Objective: This study investigated the dental visiting habit, the previous dental experiences, the conditioning pathway, and the clinically related predictors of dental fear in children.
Design: The dental history of 247 children (2-10 years old) was obtained when they came to a dental clinic for treatment. The level of dental fear in these children was assessed using the Children's Fear Survey Schedule-Dental Subscale (CFSS-DS). Observers rated the clinically anxious responses and uncooperative behaviour towards dental treatment in these children. Three stepwise regression analyses were performed to determine significant predictors of CFSS-DS score, clinically anxious responses, and uncooperative behaviour of children, respectively.
Results: We found that the CFSS-DS score and clinical anxiety have different predictors, but age < or = 3.99 years old and cooperativeness in the first dental visit were important predictors for both the CFSS-DS score and the clinical anxiety. Furthermore, the other predictors of the CFSS-DS score were maternal dental fear, unbearable pain during the first dental visit, and visiting dentists in a regular dental clinic; the other predictors of clinical anxiety were first-born, regular dentist, and CFSS-DS score. Finally, the only significant predictor for uncooperative behaviour was clinical anxiety.
Conclusion: Children's dental fear and their anxious response during dental treatment were dynamic processes that consisted of many different factors. The direct conditioning of subjective experience of pain was more important than the objective pathway of child dental fear, and the indirect conditioning does not seem influential in this study sample.