Shaping Pain Perception

Pediatric patients are a difficult case for many dentists in their clinics. Some doctors do not undertake the treatment of young patients because they are associated with potential difficulties in communication, lack of treatment effects, or simply with low profitability. On the other hand, parents do not realize that their own negative experiences related to dental treatment are transferred to their own offspring. Therefore, especially children of anxious parents need so-called adaptation visits that will most skillfully introduce them to the atmosphere of a dental clinic and will model their behavior during the visit. The child is our most important patient, because by shaping his attitude from the first contact, we have a chance to build a proper patient-dentist relationship.

Denying your child’s fear and not noticing it can lead to dentophobia in adulthood. 

In a review by M. Themessi-Huber et al. forty-three studies from six continents were analyzed [1]. The studies varied in their design, methods, age of subjects, and relation between parental and children’s dental fear. The etiology of dental anxiety is certainly multifactorial and multidimensional, but the presented meta-analysis confirmed the relation between parental and children’s anxiety before treatment. It is most noticeable in the group of 8 years old and under. Then, along with mental development, this relation diminishes. In the etiology of fear in older children, the acquisition of fear follows three different paths.