Abstract:

Dental anxiety occurs at all ages, both in children, adolescents, young adults, adults, and the
elderly. Dental anxiety can be caused by several factors: negative experiences in childhood,
personal traits, negative stories, dentist behavior, the comorbidities with others disorders, cabinet
design, and the perception of pain. The specific smell of dental clinics, the sound of the turbine,
the sight of needles or syringes, are sensory triggers in the manifestation of dental anxiety. There
are several types of treatment to reduce anxiety including imaginary exposure, rational emotional
and behavioral therapy or patient education regarding dental treatment. In this research paper we
proposed to reduce patient’s anxiety by educating them using exposure through visual methods.
We measured the dental anxiety with DAS (Scale of Dental Anxiety Scale) and anxiety as a state
with EMAS-S (Ender-Multidimensional Anxiety Scale).

Key words: dental anxiety, exposure, dentists, anxiety triggers