Avaliação do nível de ansiedade de pacientes com necessidades endodônticas: estudo piloto

Abstract

In view of the negative impact of anxiety on dental care, we proposed to evaluate the level of anxiety of patients with endodontic needs, based on a cross-sectional study carried out in the waiting room of the Endodontics Clinic of the Federal University of Paraíba. The research universe consisted of 53 patients and the pilot study was carried out with a convenience sample of 30 patients who underwent treatment between February and June 2018. For this purpose, the questionnaire applied was authorized by Abeer Al-Namankany , using the principles of the scale in which it has been developed, entitled Abeer Children Dental Anxiety Scale (ACDAS) and using the principles De 10 Jongh (1995) and Streiner, Norman (2008) adapted for patients in endodontic treatment and translated into Portuguese by Hu, Li, Gorestein, Fuentes (2007). We applied the Anxiety Scale prior to care and then with a two-week interval, the research instrument consists of 19 self-report questions with a cognitive component, in which it questions the patient's feelings when facing dental experiences. Each question uses three facial expressions as response parameters. The Excel 2007 software was used in the construction of a database for the results where they were transferred to the statistical package SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) - version 13.0 Data obtained according to the Anxiety Scale, 24 (80%) of them classified were as anxious in the initial questionnaire and 20 (66.6%) in the final questionnaire, as well as 5 (16%) extremely anxious initially and 8 (26.6%) in the final questionnaire. In the responses of the cognitive part 16 (53.3%) presented as anxious patients. It is concluded that it is of great importance to identify the levels of anxiety of patients submitted to dental treatments, since previous interference in an individualized way favors the execution of treatments less stressful for the patient as for the professional.