Anxiety, Phobia & Miscellaneous Flashcards
What is Anxiety?
Anxiety is a state of unease that patients can often relate to as they remember whatever is causing them to feel anxious.
What might cause a patient to be anxious?
Being worried, frightened or concerned about dental treatment.
What feelings and experiences might a patient exhibit when anxious?
Sweaty palms, a raised heart rate and a fluttering sensation in their stomachs.
List two things that a patient’s fear can be associated with?
Pain. Fear of the unknown. Surrendering themselves into the total care of another. Bodily change and disfigurement and feelings of claustrophobia.
When patients are anxious in a dental surgery setting they have a raised heart rate. What is the reason for this?
When pain or anxiety is experienced, it can lead to the sympathetic nervous system over-reacting. This can lead to a raised heart rate and blood pressure.
What is phobia?
Phobias are abnormal, deep-rooted, long-lasting fears of something that rarely goes away. This makes it very difficult to manage and treat someone who experiences this in the dental surgery.
If a patient became dentally phobic when would this commonly start in his/her life?
Childhood or during adolescence.
State the reasons/causes why a patient may be dental phobic?
The fears of their parents as their fear/phobias can be transferred to the child by observation. Could also be associated with blood, injury or hospitals due to personal experience. Some can occur on their own without having a rational explanation.
If a dental phobic patient attended the dental surgery, how might they respond?
Tense their muscles or could become un-cooperative.
State one thing a dental phobic patient in particular is concerned about at the dental surgery?
Dental injections or handpiece
What are the two main reasons for patients not attending the dentist?
Fear and the cost of dental treatments.
State one other reason why a patient would not attend the dentist.
Lack of dentist in the patient’s area. Not being able to register with a dentist or suffering health, resulting in mobility problems.
How does the provision of a form of dental sedation aid patients?
It allows them to accept dental treatment and therefore maintain a healthy mouth.
State the current definition of sedation.
Conscious sedation is defined as ‘a technique in which the use of a drug or drugs produces a state of depression of the central nervous system enabling treatment to be carried out, but during which verbal contact with the patient is maintained throughout the period of sedation. The drugs and techniques used to provide conscious sedation for dental treatment should carry a margin of safety wide enough to render loss of consciousness unlikely.
State the three core reasons why a form of conscious sedation may be offered to patients.
Anxious and dental phobic patients, physiological factors and complex dental treatment
