Anxiety What is the best cure for dental phobia?

What really helps against anxiety on the dentist chair

Fear of dental treatment is widespread - not just in children. German experts have now evaluated a number of scientific studies and found what works best against dental anxiety.

Dentist fear is common

The fear of the dentist is widespread, not only in children. Many adults often become uneasy days before the next visit to the dentist. There are now all sorts of tips on what to do about the fear. But not all methods help all patients equally. German scientists have now investigated the effectiveness of various non-drug interventions against mental stress and anxiety in dental care and identified what can best help those affected.

Not only children, many adults are afraid of the dentist. Scientists have now evaluated numerous studies on the subject and found what works best against dental anxiety. (Image: Production Perig / fotolia.com)

Relaxed and stress-free treatment

The reception at the counter is extremely friendly, the waiting room bright and not full, but even if the work equipment is heard, and at the latest after the patient has sat down on the dentist chair, the fear is there.

For about one in four adults, going to the dentist is associated with psychological stress and anxiety, which increases to about four percent to a pronounced dental phobia.

Various non-drug treatments are used to try to relieve the patient's anxiety, allowing them to have a more relaxed and stress-free dental treatment.

Relaxation exercises before tooth extraction

Psychologists and dentists at the University Hospital Jena have now examined how effective these interventions are in a meta-study.

For their review article, published in the journal "Journal of Dentistry," they first looked at more than 3,000 studies that have been conducted and published on this subject in the past decades.

"However, we only considered studies whose participants were randomly divided into the intervention and control groups," said Sophia Burghardt in a statement.

In her doctoral thesis, the dentist evaluated the results of the remaining 29 individual studies with a total of just under 3,000 subjects.

"The studies looked at the effects of such measures as listening to music, relaxation exercises, distraction, hypnosis or detailed information before and during treatment for, for example, larger fillings, root canal treatments, wisdom teeth extraction and implant surgery," said Burghardt.

In the evaluation of a total of 29 studies, they came to the conclusion that provide detailed information, music, relaxation and distraction against mild to moderate dental fear. Hypnosis proved to be the most effective.

Hypnosis most effective against dental fear

The result confirms the effectiveness of these approaches to take the patient's anxiety:

"We were surprised that nearly all interventions were effective in reducing mental distress, with a majority of patients reporting a decline in anxiety. By far the best results were found in the use of hypnosis, "said psychologist PD Dr. med. Jenny Rosendahl, who led the meta-study.

This confirms the result of a previous work on the effectiveness of hypnosis in surgical procedures.

She added: "However, an analgesic effect of the investigated measures could not be proven. That's probably because most dental procedures have been done under local anesthesia anyway. "

With their results, the authors of the study want to encourage dental practitioners to use non-pharmacological measures for tense and anxious patients in addition to the standard treatment.

"Distracting pictures or music can reduce the anxiety of patients. And the effort for hypnosis does not have to be great; In the studies studied, the instructions came from the tape, "said Rosendahl. (Ad)