Prevalence of dental anxiety among 5- to 8-year-old Taiwanese children.
OBJECTIVE
Many people experience discomfort to a greater or lesser degree about the prospect of dental treatment. Dental treatment can be a terrible experience, especially for children with dental anxiety. This study estimated the prevalence of dental anxiety among 5- to 8-year-old children in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan.


METHODS
The Children's Fear Survey Schedule-Dental Subscale (CFSS-DS) was translated into Chinese, and a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was made based on criteria determined from pretest clinical observations of a sample population to set a cutoff score. Then, the parental CFSS-DS was used as a screening tool to survey the dental anxiety levels of 5- to 8-year-old children at kindergartens and elementary schools in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan. Participants were selected by stratified random sampling. The stratification was done by geographic district, age group, and sex. A total of 3,597 valid questionnaires were collected.


RESULTS
The Chinese version of the CFSS-DS had an optimal cutoff score of 38/39 (sensitivity was 0.857, specificity was 0.882) with an area under the ROC curve of 0.912. The estimated prevalence of dental anxiety among 5- to 8-year-old children in Kaohsiung City was 20.6 percent. The dental anxiety score was found to decrease as age increased; primary school boys had significantly lower scores.


CONCLUSIONS
The prevalence of dental anxiety was found to be high for 5- to 8-year-old Taiwanese children. The study's findings point to the urgent need for preventive health education and intervention programs in Taiwan to promote children's oral health and reduce dental anxiety.
Lee
Chen-Yi
CY
Graduate Institute of Dental Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung City, Taiwan, R.O.C.
Chang
Yong-Yuan
YY
Huang
Shun-Te
ST
D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D016854:Dental Anxiety / Q000453:epidemiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008347:Manifest Anxiety Scale; D015995:Prevalence; D012372:ROC Curve; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013624:Taiwan / Q000453:epidemiology