title: Objective and subjective measures for assessing anxiety in paediatric dental patients.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Anxiety has been defined as a nonspecific feeling of apprehension towards a concrete situation that does  not necessarily involve a previous experience. Dental anxiety can prevent patients from cooperating fully during dental  treatment. Given that there is a connection between dental anxiety and uncooperative behaviour, it is important for dentists to  be able to assess anxiety in their patients. There are many methods for such assessment, and in children they depend on  age and intellectual development. These measures can be objective or subjective, depending on the method used to quantify  the degree of anxiety. The aim of this literature review was to analyse the objective and subjective scales that are used most  commonly to assess the degree of anxiety of children in a dental setting.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Knowing the degree of anxiety of  dental children  is important in order to guide them through their dental experience. Their level of cooperation will also  improve and anxiety will be reduced as well.
authors.affiliation: Department of Paediatric Dentistry, Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain. fguinot79@hotmail.com
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Guinot Jimeno
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yuste Bielsa
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Cuadros Fernández
authors.forename: A I
authors.initials: AI
authors.lastname: Lorente Rodríguez
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mercadé Bellido
mesh_terms: D001794:Blood Pressure; D002648:Child; D016854:Dental Anxiety / Q000175:diagnosis*; D005712:Galvanic Skin Response; D006339:Heart Rate; D006801:Humans; D006854:Hydrocortisone / Q000032:analysis / Q000378:metabolism; D008347:Manifest Anxiety Scale; D008960:Models, Psychological; D012463:Saliva / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D006854:Hydrocortisone