title: Dental Students' Perception and Anxiety Levels during their First Local Anesthetic Injection.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Student-to-student administration of local anesthesia (LA) has been widely used as the teaching modality to train preclinical dental students. However, studies assessing students' outlook towards their first injection were limited. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate students' perception and anxiety levels towards their first LA injection.
  
  
  METHODS
  Sixty three pre-clinical dental students swapped their roles as both operator and respondents in relation to their first supraperiosteal injection. After being injected, the students conferred their opinion and experiences to the questionnaire based on the five point Likert's scale and indicated their anxiety levels based on the Interval Scale of Anxiety response (ISAR). Their perception was described using frequencies and percentages and anxiety levels were statistically analysed using one way analysis variance and paired t test.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Students learning LA techniques directly on human subjects depicted not only greater confidence in them but also increased anxiety levels. The anxiety levels were found to be high before and during injection in both operator and respondent.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The students' preferred the use of preclinical models rather than student to student administration for their first LA injection exercise. Based on the results obtained, we recommend the need of preclinical simulation model in LA training program.
authors.affiliation: Academic Unit of Craniofacial Clinical Care, Faculty of Dentistry, AIMST University, 08100, Jalan Bedong, Semeling Kedah, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Balamanikandasrinivasan
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Chandrasekaran
authors.affiliation: Academic Unit of Primary and Preventive dentistry, Faculty of Dentistry, AIMST University, 08100, Jalan Bedong, Semeling, Kedah, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Navaneetha
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Cugati
authors.affiliation: Academic Unit of Craniofacial Clinical Care, Faculty of Dentistry, AIMST University, 08100, Jalan Bedong, Semeling Kedah, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Ramesh
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kumaresan
keywords: dental anxiety; local anesthesia; maxillary infiltration