What Are the Direct Detrimental Impacts of Dental Anxiety?
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Dental anxiety is an aversive or rather an acutely emotional state of worry or apprehension in near anticipation of the dental treatment the patient is about to receive. Therefore, a dentist must identify such patients during the preoperative phase and use a psychological or thermography (specially designed cameras to take images and show variations in surface heat) approach to understand their fears.
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An underestimation of the patient’s psychological or mental state, especially in fear or apprehension, can be a hindrance to the proper execution of the dental treatment, with consequent dissatisfaction for both patients and the dental professional.
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For patients who are the victims of dental fears or medical fears or suffering from severe anxiety issues, the fight-or-flight response activated due to fear or emotion in these individuals can be capable of inducing medical emergencies. For instance, vasovagal syncope (a sudden drop in blood pressure and heart rate), hypertension (increased blood pressure), or respiratory distress are results of the right or flight response in severe or distressing situations in patients affected by anxiety.
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Also, in these patients who are suffering from dental issues, their suffering would tend to become doubled or twofold due to the pre-existent dental pain or pathology that presents with clinical symptoms.
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The fear or anxiety associated with a dental procedure can only further worsen the progressive oral, orofacial, or dental Infections, and have a direct impact on the systemic health as well. The longer the dental procedures are avoided, the more dental pain or infection advances and severely creates psychosomatic distress.
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Hence, to prevent this chain of infection and detrimental sequences of progressive dental or orofacial Infection in individuals suffering from anxiety, dental surgeons should do the early identification and subsequent management of dental fear or anxiety in such patients.
What Is the Psychological Approach to Dental Anxiety?
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Dentists who can respond to patient queries effectively through healthy communication, explanation of the procedure, or early identification of dental anxiety, could effectively intervene in reducing the patient's anxiety levels towards the dental procedure.
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The approach would involve creating a more contained setting for these patients so that after a well-planned conversation between the doctor and the patient, the patient can implement the doctor's advice or suggestions as a part of the shared decision-making process.
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When both the dental doctor and the patient agree upon an appropriate treatment plan, dentists can further encourage the patients to ask questions about the procedure or treatment they are undergoing. This will reassure the patient and give them a sense of confidence in the dental professional.
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Further, such holistic and healthy conversations between the doctor and patient can enable the patients to feel in control over the situation which can eliminate their dental fear or anxiety. For example, some of the actions advocated in pediatric and adult dental patients for reducing their dental fear is to agree on a signal, such as a raised hand so that the patient can easily interrupt the procedure in case they are suffering from a short period of excessive anxiety.
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Hence, creating an optimal psychological setting to reduce the patient's anxiety or address their fears or sources of stress is the responsibility of the dental professional. This can lead to increased patient compliance and effective surgical or non-surgical intervention and dental treatment.
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Patients also gain good post-operative outcomes after invasive dental procedures, such as tooth extractions or anesthetic injections given during surgery or endodontic treatment.
What Is the Application of Thermography in Medicine and Dentistry?
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Thermography can be termed as the method of skin temperature measurement and its distribution on a body surface in a given period. Variations in the body temperature are also a natural indicator of oral or systemic illness ranging across several conditions for instance in cancers or oral malignancies, dental swellings or inflammation and cysts, and infections, all of which can cause a localized rise in temperature. These can be easily demonstrated on the thermal map as hot spots or as asymmetrical patterns in the infrared thermogram.
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In the field of medicine, the thermography technique has been successfully utilized for diagnosing breast cancer, vascular disorders, diabetic neuropathies, and peripheral vascular disorders. Furthermore, currently, thermography also has applications in kidney transplantation, in fields of dermatology, cardiology, neonatal physiology, and even for fever screening.
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The last five decades have witnessed a slow but steady rise in the use of thermal imaging cameras to obtain a direct correlation between thermal physiology and skin temperature. In the field of oral surgery and dentistry, thermography can help assess patients afflicted with chronic orofacial pain, temporomandibular joint pain, and deficits of the inferior alveolar nerve, for monitoring the temperature changes in bone temperature during the drilling process of dental implantation or maxillary sinus surgeries.
What Is the Principle and Scope of Thermography in Dental Anxiety?
Thermography is based on the principle that the heat released from the human body is in the form of electromagnetic radiation, which is invisible to the human eye, can be collected or processed through special detectors in forming or creating a pixel-based thermal map that is represented by sensors that are sensitive to infrared radiation. This enables the dentist to measure the heat pattern of the skin and the oral mucous membranes, which have an emissivity near or close to the value of the blackbody (a physical body that can absorb all electromagnetic radiations, regardless of the angle of incidence or frequency).
Since 1867, when scientists first noted through their research that emotional excitement, or fits of anger can cause a rise in body temperature, thermography has ever since then been in place to study such psychological processes or reactions in the body. While the initial thermographic research in the 19th century was concentrated on the rise in temperature alone and the mental workload of the patient, ever since then thermography research has been advancing at a slow pace and currently, it is used in medicine and dentistry in various applications by its ability to create or analyze the thermal map in patients.
Thermal imaging is one of the many aids that can help the dental operator to know about the patient's stress or anxiety. It also holds great importance in the objective identification or even in the quantification of the presence of dental anxiety.
Conclusion
Hence to conclude, apart from the psychological approach discussed above by the dentist or oral surgeon, the quantified approach to dental anxiety is used by the dental doctor as an innovative approach for the early detection and management of dental anxiety. The approach helps to make dental procedures easy for the patients and for the dentist to perform without any obstruction. Therefore, dental surgeons must opt for these psychological and thermographic approaches to make dental procedures easygoing for patients with dental anxiety or fear.
