1Professor, Department Of Oral Pathology & Microbiology, Sree Balaji Dental College & Hospital, Chennai, BIHER
2Reader, Department Of Oral Pathology & Microbiology, Sree Balaji Dental College & Hospital, Chennai, BIHER
3Head of Department Department Of Oral Pathology & Microbiology, Sree Balaji Dental College & Hospital, Chennai, BIHER
4Post Graduate Student, Department Of Oral Pathology & Microbiology, Sree Balaji Dental College & Hospital, Chennai, BIHER
*Corresponding Author: Dr. L. Malathi, MDS, Reader, Department of Oral Pathology & Microbiology, Sree Balaji Dental College & Hospital, BIHER, Mobile Number: 9543264959, E-Mail: malyraj@yahoo.com
Online published on 26 September, 2019.
ODONTOPHOBIA is dental anxiety. Often people have an extreme level of anxiety from dental visits and treatment practices carried over by dental surgeons. It may arise from their past painful experiences while visiting the dentist. Due to their extreme fear or odontophobia the patients’ oral health are hampered largely. Not only the patients avoid getting treated from dentists but finds all sorts of bizarre excuses for being spared from the same. This mainly happens due to lack of proper knowledge or awareness regarding the dental field or proper desensitization in their early childhood when fear and anxiety were seeding inside. This review literature, will shed some light on various factors associated with anxiety as well as proper management of the same. A thorough knowledge in this field will not only help the dentists to understand their patients but also motivate the patients towards dental treatment.
Dental anxiety, conditioning pathway, vicarious pathway, informative pathway, verbal threat pathway, parental pathway, Cognitive behavioral therapy
